I Should Have Stayed in My Pyjamas

An ambitious Sunday morning that went downhill very quickly.

There is a word we use where I’m from, to describe something that should have been a simple task but which has not gone according to plan, resulting in a much larger operation to repair the damage caused by the failure of the original task. That word is handling.

There are two types of handling.

A basic handling: quite common and relatively simple to get out of. I say ‘relatively’ as by its very definition, no handling is simple to get out of.

Then you have what we call ‘an absolute handling’. Much less common, extremely difficult to get out of, and more often than not, catastrophic.

I found myself stuck in an absolute handling of my own doing on Sunday.

Having gotten up early with the intention of having a productive Sunday where I actually got out of my pyjamas, I noticed the radiator in my son’s room was cold at the top. I skipped downstairs to grab the bleed key and a square of kitchen roll to dry up any drops of water that might come out, and went back up stairs to get my first job of the day out of the way.

The first problem of the morning didn’t take long to rear its ugly head when I found the bleed screw had rounded. I should have taken this as my cue to get back into my pyjamas but my Mama didn’t raise no quitter, so I soldiered on.

As it turned out, this was a problem that someone had come across before as there was a hole drilled into the front of the radiator with a screw stuck in it. Effectively a DIY bleed screw. It was an agricultural effort from a previous tenant but it worked.

I swapped my bleed key for a Phillips screwdriver and got to work.

A genuine bleed screw is designed in such a way that when you loosen it by a couple of turns, it allows the air to escape at a controlled pace. A 20mm wood screw doesn’t offer the same luxury. I had to unscrew it to near the end of its thread before I could hear the air release. As I turned away to grab my square of kitchen roll I heard a noise.

Without the context of seeing what had caused the noise, it sounded very much like my four year old son pissing in the corner. He’s learning to pee standing up at the minute and until now, we had only been doing it in the bushes. Maybe I hadn’t clarified that he wasn’t allowed to do it in the house?

What unfolded over the next minute or two left me wishing that he had in fact pissed in the corner of the room. Hell, he could have had a shit too and I still would have had a better morning than I ended up having.

I turned back to see a jet of water from the radiator hitting the opposite wall of the bedroom and the bleed screw rolling under the bed.

In hindsight, this was the point I should have called my wife for help but pride got the better of me and I wrongfully judged this was a problem I could solve on my own.

I blocked the jet stream of scalding hot water with the one square of kitchen roll I held in my hand. On my knees, with my kitchen roll hand at full length, I stretched my leg as far as I could to retrieve the screw but my shoe wouldn’t fit under the bed. Without taking my hand off the roasting hot radiator, I awkwardly managed to remove my shoe, allowing my toes to fit under the bed and drag the screw closer.

The hot water was flowing down my arm so with my free, not yet burnt hand, I managed to manipulate the screw onto the end of the screw driver. I lined it up to attack the hole but the second I released the kitchen roll, the boiling hot jet stream knocked the screwdriver out of my hand and sprayed my chest and face with boiling water.

I jammed the already saturated kitchen roll over the hole, swallowed my pride and called Mary for help. She ignored my first two calls but my third blood curdling scream got her attention. I screamed at her to turn off the heating in the hope it might somehow release a bit of pressure in the system. (It didn’t)

She took this moment to calmly explain that the screaming was unnecessary and that if I wanted the heating off I could have done it myself.

The 3rd degree burns were half way up my forearm and advancing at pace as she landed into the room to find me on my knees in an inch of water and the reason for my distress became clear.

She threw a towel at me which I used to replace what was left of my kitchen roll, taking another stream of boiling water to the face in the switchover. The large towel was saturating fast but it gave me time to line up my screw and screwdriver again.

This attempt was more successful and I got the screw into the hole but before I could tighten it, the hot water became too much and I had to drop it.

I sent Mary for a pair of gloves and a new towel. The beach towel she gave me 30 seconds ago was now completely saturated and I made a mental note to myself to check the brand of kitchen roll. That one square out performed the 8x4 towel by an order of magnitude.

Mary arrived back in and helped me put the gloves on. I struggled to put the screw on the end of the screwdriver this time as I had lost all feeling in my hands. Not to mention the ridiculous gloves Mary gave me. I would have had more dexterity in my hand had she handed me a baseball mitt.

I somehow got the screw onto the screwdriver and with a loud scream, fought through the burning flow of water long enough to manage a few turns of the screwdriver.

Finally the water stopped.

I took a deep breath and relaxed for the first time in what felt like 5 hours.

Mary began to clean up the mess while I ran my arms under the cold tap.

“Daddy!”, my eldest shouted from the bottom of the stairs, “It’s raining in the kitchen!”

“Put a jacket on” I told her as I dropped onto my bed, knowing that next Sunday, my pyjamas aren’t coming off.