Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Our Patisserie Plumber - the Curse of Claude

The curse of Claude, who plumbed our fixer upper flat twenty six years ago continues. Just last night we discovered, yet another, leak that went through the floor and blistered out the ceiling in the flat below. Ah Claude, I blame these
and your Gallic charm I mean when our Irish contractor a big burly bloke from Belfast gave us an incredible bid to fix this flat top to bottom and our expenses were tight we thought he's from heaven. Our Belfast bloke had an international crew - carpenter from Iraq, another Belfast bloke who we later found out was IRA and wanted, and a trés charmant Frenchman who was un Patissier (bakery bloke) by trade who plumbed. What could be more cool!
The intricacies of baking, lightweight crusts of croissants tied into plumbing or at least it sounded parfait at the time. Claude, we'd discovered when the crew were on break, brought brioches, an Epiphany cake you name it. The construction site of our torn up flat smelled like butter. Ah, deadlines raced by, Claude would shrug. It's like the art of baking, he'd say, it takes time. He'd appear with a tart de frangiapani...and we'd melt with the butter and his skill at what tasted like heaven.
Zut alors, leaking pipes, bubbled up floor tiles, showed up in the following years. Claude? Could he come and repair his artistic arrangements of the pipes under the sink? Claude, alas, had gone back to the mother country and was somewhere in la France Profonde.
Now twenty six years later, this horrendous leak to downstairs is being - hopefully dealt with today. Which means ripping up a ton of tile, costly piping and a new plumber who asked me 'How in the world did your former plumber do this and what was he thinking?' Ah, I give him the Gallic shrug knowing it's the Curse of Claude. 'Maybe entwining a swirl of dough like a croissant'. Cara - Tuesday in leaksville.

9 comments:

  1. I enjoyed this light-hearted take on an annoying issue. It's hard enough to deal with a licensed plumber here. Cara's Paris eclectic trio sound like characters in a good book. But I hope they get it right.

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  2. If not a novel, and sitcom for sure!

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  3. Errrhooohaahahrmmm [shaking and shivering] I can do a LOT of different things (and master of few of them), but I absolutely HATE plumbing. If there's a way, water WILL find it.

    Sigh. But at least the hot buttered croissants numb some of the pain...

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  4. Sacre blu! Shades of We're No Angels. It would have to have been Peter Ustunov who played Claude. Are you sure the weren't jailbirds? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/We're_No_Angels_(1955_film)

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  5. thank you all for commiserating...the leaky saga continues...

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  6. Hope your leaks are now sorted, Cara. You have my sympathies. I had a few leaky moments with my new house, which required considerable replumbing. And nobody brought me pastries while I was doing it.

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    1. You know, Zoë, when you have those leaky moments, they DO sell adult diapers...

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    2. Yes, but i had great difficulty getting them to stay fastened around the pipes, EvKa ...

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  7. Hi Cara, this is Catharin in DC. Strangely, when I was living in SF, in the Seventies, the manager of my apartment was exiled IRA. Apparently a group of IRA fighters immigrated to San Francisco after Bloody Sunday and were working as construction workers, roofers and, apparently, plumbers. Hope you get the leak fixed. If you do find a good plumber let me know - I will pay his (or het) airfare to Washington! Look forward to seeing you @ Politics and Prose when St-Germaine is out. Cheers.

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