It started with a drip. Just a little one. Plink.
JC said it was nothing. “It’s just condensation,” he mumbled, toothbrush dangling from his mouth like a limp cigar. But by the third day, the bathroom sounded like it was trying to play jazz—irregular bursts of plumbing percussion echoing off the tiles while I tried to change Albert’s socks without triggering a meltdown.
Then, mid-week, the tap finally gave up pretending. I turned the handle and it detached clean off. Just… came away in my hand like it had lost the will to live. Water gushed. I screamed. Albert thought it was a performance art piece. JC was in a meeting and texted back: “Did you try turning it off and on again?”
I did not reply.
Instead, I fetched a towel. Then another. Then a bucket. And finally, I sat down on the flooded bathroom floor, soaked, feral, muttering about tiling grout and the patriarchy.
It’s amazing how the tiniest crack in your day can unearth all the stuff you’ve been trying to neatly pack away. Albert had been stimming more than usual. I hadn’t slept a full night in two weeks. The dishwasher was on strike. And somewhere in the chaos of this leaky little life, I’d forgotten to do anything for myself that didn’t involve scheduling, scrubbing, or negotiating with a 7-year-old terrorist in Toy Story pyjamas.
So I booked a wine tour.
I mean, not for that day. Obviously. But the idea burrowed in, clung on. Something quiet. Grown-up. Slow. One of those vineyard walks through Priorat where you sip something that’s been aging longer than your child’s been alive and pretend you don’t have a broken mop handle in your boot.
JC said I was being dramatic.
I told him he could fix the tap.
He googled “how to fix emotional plumbing.”
We didn’t speak for two hours.
Eventually, JC’s dad came round with a man he claimed was “a wizard with a wrench.” The wizard turned out to be a butcher in his spare time. Literally. He fixed the tap with duct tape and some sort of meat hook. It’s still dripping, but now it does it with dignity.
The towels dried. The floor got mopped. Albert declared the entire event “very splashy” and went back to stacking jam jars. I stood in the kitchen, waiting for JC to apologise, but instead he asked if I wanted to try that wine place in Priorat next month. That was his version of sorry.
And honestly, I’ll take it.