Happy Birthday Mr Gas Man

We recently had a new boiler and a new radiator fitted. The boiler was fine but the radiator leaked and so my Christmas preparations have included entertaining several gas men. Some have been grumpy, some lovely, most drink a lot of tea (and never seem to need the loo) and the last one, who finally fixed the leak was chatty.

He told me about his daughter, who is having to entertain her in-laws for Christmas and how much he is enjoying watching her regret offering. This was just after I had offered to host the big family party and so I had a lot of sympathy for his daughter. He wasn’t going to let her off that lightly, though. As a difficult child he saw this as pay back that he was going to sit back and happily watch. He told me that he had always cooked Christmas dinner and we discussed the best day to go to Tesco. He and his wife often have to work at Christmas. I was surprised that people got their leaky radiators fixed on Christmas Day but he said he was just on call for the ‘if you smell gas’ duty. His wife, as a midwife, is on call for the birth of Jesus. His daughter and her husband are physicists, working at Porton Down and even after only half an hour of hearing about her I am concerned. Not only for their Christmas dinner but also for our country’s nuclear weapons programme. She can’t do anything without a list, which I think sounds perfectly reasonable. I like a list. But if she has written, “get up at 20 past,” and she sits in bed until the clock ticks to 7.21 she can’t get up until 8.20. This caused Mr Gas Man unimaginable stress when his kids were at school, because school busses don’t wait an hour for their students. Her list is rarely time focused but task focused. One day she was due to meet her sisters in London and had agreed a time. Her and her husband had written their list before going to bed. Thinking that they normally wake up at 7am they decided they had time for two episodes of Game of Thrones before she had to catch her train. The list went something like this:

1. Wake up

2. Make cup of tea

3. Get some cereal.

4. Eat breakfast in bed

5. Watch 2 episodes of GoT

6. Get up

7. Shower

8. Get dressed

9. Go to trin station

10. Catch train

The problem came when they didn’t wake up until 8.30. One of her sisters rang, “Where are you? You’re half an hour late!”

“I’m just getting in the shower. I’m at number 7 on the list.”

“It sounds as though you’ve had a lucky escape, not being invited to theirs with the in-laws,” I pointed out to the chatty Gas man. 

He told me that he wouldn’t go to hers anyway. Not on his birthday. 

“It’s your birthday on Christmas Day?” I asked, surprised that he hadn’t mentioned it before. “That must be...”

What could I say? 

I think it would be awful. 

He thought a birthday just after Christmas would be worse, “At least you always have a nice time on Christmas Day. You get a nice dinner and people try to like each other.”

“I don’t suppose it ever gets forgotten,” I said.

He wasn’t sure. His uncle always gave him a joint birthday and Christmas present but his brother got about the same and it wasn’t his birthday. 

Happy Birthday, Mr Gas Man. I hope this one is memorable and you get twice the presents of everyone else. I hope Jesus isn’t born, that no houses explode from gas leaks and that everyone appreciates your cooking.