Not everybody chooses to take a ‘Help Yourself’ book on ‘Water Services’ to read while waiting for an oncology appointment, but i found the little red book, written in 1954, soothing and distracting. Plumbing seemed so simple then- no combi boilers or underfloor heating to get confused by, and underpinning the daunting instructions for fitting your own immersion rod into a water cylinder, was the knowledge that many homes were cold damp places for much of the year.
The lack of specialist tools and materials emerges as W.P.Matthew explains how to fashion a cutter to repair a worn out seating in a tap. (worn out because the washer wasn’t replaced in time.)
‘The cutter can be made from a piece of steel rod three eighths of an inch in diameter. It will have to be heated at one end and that end knocked out into a chisel shaped about three quarters of an inch wide. Right then, that easy eh?
There is a much more straightforward method mentioned for clearing blockages from the top of a drain hole. W.P writes –
‘If your wife doesn’t happen to be in, her crochet hook is ideal for the job. Is she is in, you will have to do with a bent hairpin or something similar.’
It was this glimpse into the writer’s life that made me burst out laughing in a hospital corridor and the start of a hunt to find out more about him.
Few DIY writers write with such a wry style and dry wit. It seemed surprising that W P Matthew “television, radio and newspaper handyman” was never mentioned and I resolved to find out more.
His son later told me some more about the home life of such a competent man. The aforesaid wife had gone shopping one day and had come back to find that WP had knocked two rooms into one while she was gone. Life must have had its ups and downs.
