More Mother Flood Drama! More! More!
How the saga has continued since my last entry.....
After many an email of woe arriving from my mother about how she thought the insurance assessor would refuse her claim and she'd have to sue them, I replied saying "yes, but although you say you've given the insurance company my phone number, they've not contacted me, and we don't want any mould spreading while they twiddle their thumbs, so could you either remind them again or give me your claim number and details so I can phone them myself".
Sane people, surely, would email a reply giving a reference number and an expression of thanks. My mother's email the next day, however, was a torrent of capitalized incoherent words expressing her panic because she'd just tried to phone me ten times to give me the information, and hadn't got through, although she'd stayed up until 4am Indian time so that she could phone me every hour. She'd tried both our home phone and mobile and couldn't get hold of me, the insurance company couldn't get hold of me, and that would mean that the insurance company would refuse her claim because they wouldn't be liable for it getting worse while I was unavailable. Oh, and the insurance company were also telling her over the phone that her claim didn't exist, and that they hadn't had any emails from her, although she could prove that she sent them because she hadn't had any return failures.
Sarah then informed me that due to a little oops our home phone had been off the hook for most of a day, but that she knew for certain that my mother hadn't called the mobile, because it has voicemail and call notification. My suspicions that my mother had been calling the wrong number increased when I was talking to the insurance company and it turned out that the claim number she'd given me was missing a digit. Also, when I gave them my name and phone number, they already knew my name, but the number they repeated back was one digit out from what I said. I straightened things out with them, and sent my mother a soothing email.
Nevertheless, the fun wasn't over then. Today I got a letter from my grandparents in the post, saying how my mother's in a terrible state because she can't phone me so doesn't know what's happening about the house, and they've tried as well, but the operator says the number's been disconnected. My mother is apparently distraught, unable to sleep,and has spent thirty quid in the payphone booth attempting to phone me constantly (Er, how does that work, if she isn't getting through?)
I had to phone them up and calm them down as well. Fortunately my grandfather is taking the whole thing with a pinch of salt, but my grandmother is getting more confused with age and is rather upset by it all.
"Oh dear, your poor mother, what a terrible thing she's going through," she said to me. "I'm sure it's not possible for any of it to be sorted out before she gets back, but I've told her, when she does get back in April, the first thing she must do is get a solicitor."
"Solicitor?" I replied. "She doesn't need a solicitor. What she needs is a plumber, and we're sorting one out for her now. The insurers said we should get a plumber in to fix the pipe and write a report that it's caused by frost damage, and they'll reimburse us. No problem."
"Oh, your poor mother".
Oh, and one other thing. Maybe a strange coincidence, but the night after we had the phone off the hook and my mother sent the email saying that she couldn't contact us, I was woken at 4am by a single ring of the landline phone - someone had called us and then put the phone down after just a second, long before anyone could pick it up. A minute later, it happened again. Then nothing.