Getting Connected

When I got this flat, I vaguely wondered what kind of arrangements there might be regarding utilities, but never quite got round to asking.   It became an issue when some men came round to install my cooker. “No gas!”, they said, and they were right.   So I called my landlord, the men spoke to my landlord, and I was taken round the side of the building.  There I was slightly surprised to find a row of pipes, one for each flat, to which (if one wants gas) one has to connect a gas canister:

It’s no particular trouble, as long as the stuff doesn’t run out when you’re halfway cooking something; just call the gas man, and he comes round a few minutes later to swap your old empty tank for a nice new one.

Then one day last week, I woke up to find that there was no water in the flat.  I went to work smelly and slightly displeased, and sent my landlord a message to tell him about the problem. “OK”, he replied, so I came home in the afternoon expecting to find a working shower.   Still no water, so I called him and he came round. Yes, you’ve guessed it: there is another row of pipes, one for each flat, this time on the outside wall of the compound:

(Incidentally, the window at the top left is one of mine; next to it is the balcony).

When you run out, you call the water man and he gets in his tanker and drives some water to you (unsurprisingly the town is full of these tankers), and it gets pumped into your flat’s individual tank up on the roof:

Unfortunately on this occasion, the water had been pumped into wrong pipe and another flat had got my water, so we had to get him round again.

The only remaining mystery is the electricity supply.  At this rate, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised to find a stack of car batteries in a cupboard somewhere.  And when you run out…

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