The Icy Saints
12 May 2025
I have had more than one person tell me about the icy saints on May15th. I believe they are 3 saints, whose feast days fall on the 13th, 14th and 15th of May, after which , people are sure the last frost has gone and they plant with abandon. I have of course been impatient, so it was reassuring when Alice an elderly neighbour from Portugal admitted she too had some veg in the ground. We were both delighted having planted on Saturday, it poured rain all day Sunday.
The heating system is no longer. It’s been an adventure. Johnny showed up to remove it for free. He had a truck with a winch and a spanner and nothing else. I was immediately suspicious of his abilities. The fact he has been the only person to have found the place without having to ring me was impressive, so against all intuition I let him get on with the work. Intuition is there for a reason. I turned off the power at the mains switch and Johnny decided it was necessary to turn off all the other fuses too. That was odd. When he began to order me about and expect me to loosen all the radiators in the house while he tackled the furnace I really should have said stop.
It was one of those moments, the solar guys rang for information, Johnny started yelling in the cellar, a delivery van arrived. I went to the cellar to see hot water pissing all over the place, but had I not turned off the water supply, what was going on? it seemed like hundreds of liters had already seeped out into the garden, Johnny was bouncing around like a crazed leprechaun turning taps to no effect, he came and turned the tap I had turned off and the water stopped. I can only assume he didn’t know I had turned it off and had inadvertently turned it back on again. When I asked him what he had done, he turned on me savagely, ‘I am doing it for nothing’. That wasn’t the point and he wasn’t doing it for nothing, the phone rang again and it was someone who needed to talk. I managed to keep it together and promise to call him back in a few. I took in the delivery of new radiators and then went to see what Johnny had done. As far as I could tell he cut above the system taps instead of below.
That afternoon I hurt myself lifting these huge old radiators with him and chucking them out the window to his truck. Those we couldn’t lift he smashed to bits with a hammer and that too was a mini disaster. I offered him a glass of water and as I left the room the glass promptly exploded as a piece of metal flew through it. That glass was 25 years old.
When he came back a few days later he emptied the fuel into plastic tanks. He also emptied it onto the floor , all over the tank and god knows where else. I had been keeping pretty good wood in the cellar and he dumped all the old junk in a pile on top of it. He seemed defeated as he left.
I surveyed the damage, rang another candidate who wanted to charge too much money for the job and asked was he available. The stench of fuel over the area was way too much. The mess was way too much and I would have to pay anyway. The gentleman listened to my story and dropped his asking price by 1000 euros. He showed up on Friday and the remaining radiators and the fuel tank were gone by lunch time. The work was efficient and even spectacular. You can see a video on the instagram account .
Now my walls have huge holes where he had cut away the metal and the walls broke.
I had 3 electricians I spoke to about installing the new radiators, two came to the house to see the work, and one sent an estimate for the cost. The two who visited have disappeared into the mists of time.
I feel challenged. But I am pushing forwards.
April 30, 2025