The answer's obvious, isn't it?

Four Plumbers.

Imagine, if you will, my joy.

Yes! 33.3% more plumbers to knock great big holes smack dab in the middle of the living room wall. 33.3% more plumbers to wield the great big electric drill. 33.3% more plumbers to dig through your kitchen drawers and use your poultry shears to cut open bags of cement. 33.3% more plumbers to leave said cement-dust-coated scissors out in the rain. 33.3% more black goo on the kitchen counter. 33.3% more black goo on the bathroom counter. 33.3% more black goo in the sinks. 33.3% more penises to miss the toilet. 33.3% more cement-dust-with-a-soup�on -of-mud footprints. (The number of cement-dust pawprints, sadly, remains the same.) 33.3% more plumbers to drop heavy metal wrenches on the delicate and no doubt expensive tile floor. 33.3% more plumbers to ply their cowboy ways.

33.3% more Hell.

Frightening, isn't it?

There are benefits, though. Lower-Middle Plumber (the new one), actually seems to know what he's doing. (!) Of course, whether this turns out to be an actual benefit, and not merely the deluded fantasies of a desperate woman, remains to be seen.

They've gone to lunch now, but they'll be ba-ack.

Stay tuned.

AtBay was talking in her journal about Sunday closing laws. In short, she was lamenting the fact that the Christian notion of the Sabbath has resulted in the "Keep Sunday Special" type of world-view in which shops are kept closed, people are expected to engage in appropriate family-type Sunday activities, and pubs have limited hours. Actually, she didn't mention that last one, but it annoys me, so I'll throw it in for free. The upshot is a disadvantage for Non-Christians, and those Christians whose ideas of immorality do not encompass spending Sunday engaged in 1950s-style wholesome family behavior.

It's a good point, but there is more to it than that, at least in Europe.

The truth is, most people don't WANT to work on Sunday. And if you own a business, and no one else is open on Sundays (for whatever reason), you are not at a disadvantage if you stay closed, too.

In Turkey, there are quite a few places that are closed on Sundays. Odd, really, when you consider that Turkey is 99% Muslim. They just want a day of rest, I think, when they can picnic with their families and hang out eating ice-cream etc. Friday is the Muslim holy day, but you won't see many places closed, save maybe an extra long lunch to cover mosque-time. Not that you really notice, though: the Turks tend to close their shops for a few hours here and there for whatever reason, or possibly no reason at all. It's very hit-or-miss, shopping in Istanbul.

Most things in Malta, as I mentioned, are closed-- including the museums. The Maltese are a deeply Catholic people, and I do believe that that has a lot to do with it. Even the churches are not open once the day's Masses are concluded.

Italy is not that drastic. Museums are open (closing day is Monday), a few shops and department stores as well (as I discussed yesterday evening). A few grocery stores will open for a few hours to cater for those who realize they're out of whatever for the traditional Sunday Blow-out Feast. Many caf�s and restaurants are open, especially in the city centers, where most tourists and passagiate take place. In addition, in Milan at least, many stores (again, in the Centro) will stay open one Sunday a month, especially if a car-free day has been called.

Germany, however, is the absolute worst, Sunday-closing-wise. I believe (and this is from memory and therefore suspect) that the majority of Germans are Protestant. In some areas, however, there is a Catholic majority. It just depends. It makes no difference, really, as most Germans would rather spend the day tromping through the forest, maybe stopping at a friendly beer-garden or restaurant mid-hike, than go to church.

Germany has a law that states that the only retail businesses that may remain open are those that sell souvenirs, or those that cater to travellers, such as gas-stations and certain shops in the train stations and the like (although most of those remain closed, as well). Therefore, if you run out of milk on a Sunday, you have to go to the Hauptbahnhof (main, city-center train station) or the mini-mart at the gas station, if you're lucky enough to have one close by. If you need laundry detergent or flour, there is a scandalously overpriced supermarket at the airport. Go for it. Most restaurants and bars stayed closed, out of choice. (Except those beer-gardens deep in the forest, of course.) Furthermore, most stores, grocery and otherwise, close at 4pm on a Saturday afternoon. Some, like the one near us, closed at two. Better watch the clock on Saturday, or it'll be mighty slim pickings come Sunday, is what I'm saying.

They may have changed that law: I don't know. They were threatening to do so while we were living there, but they had been threatening to change it at that point for ten years or some ridiculous amount of time like that, to no avail. Why not?

Because the business owners opposed it.

Here's an amusing story. Kaufhof, a large German department store, wanted to stay open on Sundays. (At least I think it was Kaufhof: it may have been Hertie. If I've got it mixed up, please forgive me: I'm under a lot of plumbing stress today.) So what they did was to tag everything, from socks to bras to sofas, "Souvenir of Germany" one Saturday night. On Sunday morning, they opened for business, secure in the knowledge that they were snugly within the law-- they were selling souvenirs, weren't they?

Well, all hell broke loose. The government filed charges, backed up by all sorts of other retailers. Chief among them was Hertie, their chief rival. Now, in the US, for example, Hertie could have been expected to buy a shitload of souvenir tags themselves while registering their support for Kaufhof with the Court or Agency or wherever. "Hey, let's all make some more money!"

Not in Germany. They wanted to "keep Sunday special." They wanted their day of rest.

Maybe it was because they didn't want to pay their employees overtime.

But I doubt it was for a reason as lofty and high minded as Keeping Holy the Sabbath Day.

News Flash!

The Plumbers have left the building.

My livingroom-slash-kitchen looks like present-day Bethlehem, with a suspiciously high number of cement-dust pawprints in forbidden places.

Calliope knows she's not supposed to go there. Or over there, or on top of that. But I've been hiding out in the bedroom, away from the plumbers, and I guess she thought I'd never know.

But she likes the plumbers, when they're not wielding noisy sledgehammers like a latter-day John Henry, or whining drills like some �ber-dentist. No, she likes the plumbers in slightly-more-quiet mode, because they let her root around in their toolboxes and basically do whatever she damn well pleases. The plumbers are her friends, not mine.

Especially after the scissors incident. I discovered the scissors-slash poultry shears while the four plumbers had gone to lunch, and I was making mine. To say I was pissed would be to be making an error of the understatement variety. So I carefully cleaned, then hid, the scissors. Then I tied up the the kitchen drawers with kitchen string. Trussed 'em up real good. Then, after the return of the plumbers, I went into the bedroom and ate my lunch in front of the X-Files, jsut waiting to hear the banging of the kitchen drawers. The Idiots, apparently, couldn't figure it out. I sauntered out into the kitchen. "Something wrong?"

They weren't at all happy, the plumbers. They may even think that I'm a bitch. Which is not a Bad Thing.

And now they are gone. Yay me! Now it's cleaning time, and it will take more than "a while", methinks.

But it's not as bad as last time, so that's something.

And they are not, repeat NOT, coming back tomorrow. That was the old plan. The new plan is "let's do it all in one day", and now they've finished. I won't mention the phone call Middle got this morning, from a woman who sounded a wee bit irate, and whom I could hear clear across the kitchen. My Italian, as I've mentioned probably to the point of ennui, is not the greatest, so I won't mention overheard snippets such as "it's not my fault" and "I'll be there as soon as I can." Her loss, my gain, is what I figure, whatever the reason.

Oh, they've done a cheesy, sloppy job, but I expected no less from professionals such as themselves. The air-conditioner does seem to work, but I really don't think the one unit in the living area is going to be enough to cool the bedroom, too, especially given the layout of our apartment. No matter: we'll just crank that puppy way up, and keep a sweater nearby in case we need to get a glass of water in the middle of the night. We don't pay for electricity. If Landlady wants to be cheap, I am more than willing to be expensive.

But that's it for now, at least until they return to destroy the bathroom and make use of the gigantic holes they smashed though the walls last time.

Maybe four plumbers really are better than three.