THEY say it never rains but it pours, and last week was a perfect illustration of that behind the curtains of Casa Davies.

Tempted by the offer of better priced broadband and TV a few weeks ago we decided to abandon the companies we’ve handed over our hard earned cash to for more than ten years, in favour of the greener grass of their competitors.

“ Your broadband will be faster than ever and you’ll get exactly the same TV service but at a fraction of the cost,” we were assured.

Ten days later I was almost reaching breaking point as yet another customer services assistant told me how sorry she was that I’d had no broadband or TV for days.

“Are you from Wales?” asked one helpful soul who told me he was based in southern Ireland.

Thinking this might provide an instant solution to my problem I told him I was.

“I’ve always wanted to go to a place in Wales called Archfarchnad,” he told me. “I saw it on a road sign on a TV programme once and thought it sounded grand.”

Unwilling to burst his travel bubble I didn’t tell him his dream location was the Welsh word for supermarket.

On Tuesday, sick and tired of the chaos I ditched the new systems and signed up again with those I’d abandoned.

“That’s it,” I announced to the housemate. “We’re never moving any services again.”

By mid afternoon, with the papers safely off to print I decided to claim back a few overtime hours and make an early start on some work in the garden.

Popping into the downstairs loo before I headed off to my horticultural project, I noticed that a tiny leak from a radiator pipe I’d been monitoring for a few days hadn’t improved, so with a few spare moments on my hands I decided to tighten the nut I believed to be the source of the tiny wet patch on the floor.

Kneeling down I took grip of the offending joint only to be virtually knocked off my knees by a fountain of cold water which almost hit the ceiling.

Desperately trying to control the flood I shouted for the housemate, hoping she would hear me, despite the fact that for some reason she rarely uses her hearing aids on the days I work from home. Eventually she realised that the panic in my voice was real and arrived on the scene armed with the household’s supply of towels.

“Ring the emergency pipe insurance number,” I urged her.

“You’ll have to do that,” she replied. “I haven’t got my hearing aids in so I can’t hear them.”

“Which hand am I supposed to use?” I asked trying against the odd to hold the two ends of broken pipe together.

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree does it?” said The Mother rolling her eyes as she surveyed the damage later that night.

“I remember your father tried to change a washer on the water tank once and flooded the house and brought the ceiling down,” she said.

“I wish I’d known that this afternoon,” said the housemate in a tone which was anything but forgiving.