Published at 09:39, Friday, 08 January 2010

MY favourite room in Hextol Towers is the conservatory, where Mrs Hextol and I spend many happy hours counting sheep on distant Dunterley Fell and feeling at peace with the world.

It was therefore with considerable distress the other day that I received a plaintive telephone call at work from Mrs H to indicate that after several hours of hectic Christmas shopping, she found herself locked out.

Something critical had snapped inside the door, so the handle was simply spinning round and round without engaging any release mechanism inside.

She had been round to the front door – but the presence of the key in the lock on the inside prevented the key going in from the outside.

The thermometer read -5C, and Mrs Hextol’s fury 55C when two and half hours later, she was still outside, being watched dolefully from the inside by the cross-legged Hextol Hound, whose lunch time constitutional was long overdue.

Endeavours to effect an egress by Hextol Major via several cracked open windows only went to prove that the conservatory was every bit as burglar proof as the salesman had boasted.

Finally, it was decreed the only way of getting in was by smashing a window, but I thought it politic to check with the house insurance company first.

Alas, the insurance details were locked inside with the dog, so I had to go to the busy bank premises to try to gain authorisation for the authorised forcible entry.

The staff at the bank were very helpful, ringing their insurance arm, but the helpfulness ended there.

The fact that my wife was standing in the garden in sub-zero temperatures cut no ice at all with the chap I spoke to.

Forty years of premiums and never a claim counted for nothing either, as the prim pen pusher said he could not countenance window breaking, and I would have to contact a locksmith.

“And how do you suggest I do that, when the Yellow Pages is locked in the house?” I grated, but I could detect the wave of bland indifference to Mrs Hextol’s plight wafting down the line.

I went back to work to break the news by telephone to an ever-more distressed Mrs Hextol, who announced that Hextol Major was now attacking the broken door with a hacksaw, screwdriver and other implements, but with little success.

Then, she gave a small cry of triumph which said: “He’s in!” immediately followed by the gallop and gush of the relieved Hextol Hound.

Damage to the door was minimal, and with a blob of BluTak and considerable ingenuity, the door was even closeable again.

My first job when I got in that night was to rummage in the box where we keep Important Documents, and lo and behold, there was the 10-year guarantee from the company which installed the conservatory.

As happens so often with companies in this field, the installers had gone bust, and although a new company was operating from the same site with a similar name, it would not accept responsibility for the promises of its predecessor.

I recalled raising this very point with the conservatory salesman, who had been at pains to point out that the guarantee was with an independent company – a fact that was underlined and starred on the receipt.

“Bingo,” I thought, and rang the guarantee company whose name appeared on the documentation.

A disagreeable wench demanded details of the agreement number, and then the address – and announced rather proudly that there was no record of any agreement with us.

I told her I had the paperwork in front of me, featuring her company’s reassuring guarantee to repair any faults with the edifice, but apparently the guarantee was not worth the paper it was written on.

She whined in estuary English something of the nature of “If you check section D, sub section 43, paragraph 18 B(2) under that bit that looks like a crease in the paper, you will find that the guarantee – if indeed such a thing existed – would only cover catastrophic failure of either the actual glass or the uPVC, and then only if there is an R in the month.

“We could not possibly cover anything with moving parts, such as a door, when there is the remotest likelihood it could go wrong. We are not some sort of charity.”

Despite my spluttering and ranting, she was totally unmoved – and no use whatsoever.

Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk