It's a gas, gas, gas

摘要

There were four of us standing in a half refurbished house in Chelsea. We were trying to sort out a heating system, and it was the usual balance of cold water storage against mains pressure. We thought we were having the "It's 3 bar here, but what will the pressure be like at the top?" conversation. After about 10 minutes we realised that we were actually having the "How much extra is it worth paying so you don't have to deal with the utilities?" conversation. There was a golden period of about 12 months after the utilities were privatised when you could ring someone up with your gas/water/electricity/ phone problem and they just couldn't help you enough. "Yes sir. No sir. No trouble sir - would you like our technical engineers to come and meet you to assess your needs? I'm afraid we couldn't get anybody round much before tomorrow afternoon would that be all right?" After the runaround you'd been used to from, for example, the Gas Board, this was like walking along a York stone path after spending decades wading through Swarfega.