Fireplace farewell

We had solid fuel central heating many years ago before switching to nasty non-eco-friendly oil. Part of that, of course, was a back boiler. Over the years I've often threatened to remove the thing, but people put me off by telling me the back boiler would make that difficult and expensive. Finally, as part of the current do-part-of-the-house-up project, the job got added to the list and today was the day to bid farewell.

My 'builder' guy was very wary of doing the job and took two weeks to tell me that. The complication was that taking out a back boiler is a job for a plumber. Thankfully I happened to ask my painter if he knew a plumber who might be game. He did. As it happened, Seán the plumber is Dave the painter's uncle — and they're both brilliant people. Seán was due to do the deed yesterday but had an emergency call to tend to a gas leak, which turned out to take most of the day. He said he'd be with me early this morning and was: at 7 a.m.

I didn't know the work would require the use of a very noisy jack hammer (closely related to a pneumatic drill), but that's what jumped into action at 7:30 a.m. I'd no chance to warn the semi-detached neighbour, who turned up in his back garden half an hour later in his dressing gown and with an unhappy scowl on his face. I didn't like to remind him that he's the one who's been hammering and drilling and sawing and I don't know what for most of a month since he moved in. Still, he may have been noisy, but nothing he produced could compete with my jack hammer.