LUKE MARSDEN: I've been awash with plumbing woes

You must be the unluckiest lad in Wigan.
A familiar sight in the Marsden kitchenA familiar sight in the Marsden kitchen
A familiar sight in the Marsden kitchen

That’s what a plumber said to me this week after I handed over my American Express card to him after he’d fixed a second leak in less than 24 hours.

At the start of the year alongside the Covid virus deciding to join me in my house, my bathroom shower (less than two years old) decide to leak down through the floorboards onto my kitchen ceiling. Cue the cost of an entire new kitchen ceiling and the loss of my taste and smell.

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Fast-forward seven months, and with my taste and smell fully returned, last weekend I was about to head to Manchester for a night out with friends (remember when people did that?) only to hear dripping onto my new kitchen ceiling. I quickly googled emergency plumbers in Wigan as water started to pour through my spot lights onto me as though I was attempting to re-create an at-home version of Peter Andre’s Mysterious Girl video.

The plumber came, ripped up a floorboard, put some sealant down in the shower basin and claimed to have fixed the problem. Off I went, £250 lighter for my night out in Manchester, only to return hungover the next day to find water still dripping onto my ceiling in the same area. After what I can only describe as a 48-hour masterclass in how to not to deal with customers correctly, the problem was fixed, again. The plumber was right: I was unlucky, unlucky that I had this Manchester firm operating in the Wigan area.

I won’t name them simply because I don’t believe they deserve a right to reply. Three leaks, two plumbers and one case of Covid and a new celling in eight months, it sounds like the start of an awful Christmas song.

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