2:10

The sun was coming through the small high window on the east side of the room when it happened. It was a peculiar time of day when the light bounces off the brass work and seems to turn the normally chocolate-brown woodwork into an auburn plane of luxurious tones and textures. All the pipe work takes on a playful gleam as it moves the light across the room and turns the otherwise dour and serious decor into a playful wonderland.

I remember it clearly. It had been months since I had been up early enough to see it. Or, more properly, had been up and clearheaded enough to understand what I was seeing. Such are the joys of a philosopher’s existence. And a philosopher I was, or else how would I be able to deal successfully with such turmoil. It had been a quiet week: the world was calm, the machine sedate and the wine immoderate. It was thus that I knew a change was in the wind. The karmic flow demands a certain rhythm, and my pleasant sojourn here was obviously not providing sufficient modulation.

So things broke.

I was contemplating the intricate pattern of brass-and-copper tubing that formed the mainstay of the house’s internal functions. I had often thought this room must have been designed with a philosophic soul such as mine in mind: the sheer magnitude of the mechanical works would boggle any lesser mind, yet this room occupied one of the best spaces in the whole keep. High, warmed by the sun, out of the prevailing winds and with views both with and without that would simultaneously stun and inspire any but the dullest of minds.

As I stared up towards the ceiling of the room the I saw a tiny fountain of steam begin to slowly, and then with ever more pressure, escape the confines of one of the larger brass couplings on the main incoming conduit. I stared at it in fascination as the superheated water vapour moved in and out of the ray of morning sun that had played such a large part in my early day-adventure. Taken as a whole, as an objet d’art, it added an unimaginable dimension to the previously stately procession of light and colour. Of course it took only a few moments of increasing pressure build-up before the tiny leak was screaming like the mythical banshee. But yet, for just a few more moments, I sat and stared, frozen, like the equally mythical victims of the aforementioned banshee. Soon enough, though, I came to my senses and decided to put philosophy aside as a matter of prudence and turned my attention to the problem that the presence of a leak presented. If action was too soon taken, all the press of the keep would grind to an ignominious halt and the creature comforts, such as they are, that make this existence tolerable would cease to be. A fate, let me assure you, that would be indeed worse than death.

At that point I determined I would have to act to counter this undesirable outcome. So I turned quickly to the mahogany wardrobe set in an alcove on the only wall free of mechanical works and, in a manner some might consider hurried, withdrew a large #7 spanner. Implement I hand I hurried to the base of the wall now spewing out clouds of angry vapour, not unlike the emissions of a miniature wyvern trapped in a cylindrical river and attempting to wrest itself free. I hiked up my morning coat and hoisted myself into the pipe works, attempting to avoid, as much as I was able, the more thermally intense metal pathways.

As I came within reach of the hissing and wailing geyser I had to bring my coat up over my head as the heat was so intense that it would scald my face. Reaching one arm through the maze of pipes, I held my body solidly against the works and braced my feet as high as I could to gain as much leverage as possible. With my left hand I fitted the spanner on the control fitting and quickly threw my weight against the handle. I needed to slow the flow enough to be able to effect repairs. As I strained upward, the fountains of inflamed steam slowly dwindled to spitting and spatting dribbles that, while still scalding to the touch, were at least negotiable.

I attempted to transfer the wrench to the voluminous pocket on my morning coat, but in my doing so, the moisture left behind by my sojourn in the spray caused my grip to slip, and the spanner fell to the stone floor. I am proud to say that at this point I exceeded the standard of intemperate eruption that had been set by my former tutor upon discovering that I had not only failed to do the assigned work but had in fact caused his closeted indiscretions to come to the attention of my father. To be fair, I had had to do much more work to ensure my father’s wrath would land upon my tutor than had originally be assigned to me. But alas, he had not deemed the exchange a fair one. Nonetheless, I was rid of his odious presence for the price of one extremely inventive and highly improper disquisition. As I said, I hold myself quite in awe of the fact that, in that moment, dangling high above the floor, soaked to the skin, my best coat probably ruined, and under the threat of an impending forced rustic existence, I managed to do the old sod proud. He’d finally taught me something useful.

Well, to move forward, I managed to extricate myself and, once on the ground, took the opportunity to acquire such materials as I would need to patch the never sufficiently be damned leak, recover my abused spanner, and once again set off to repair the damage. Suffice to say, after several more aggravating setbacks, I was once again bracing myself and pulling on the spanner, this time towards myself as I allowed the steam to flow once again through the tubing, repressuring the system, and thus allowing the machinery to regain its previous robustness and, I should hope, ensuring myself a much more pleasant day than had seemed feasible scant minutes earlier.

A few moments later I stood on the ground, bedraggled and aching in not a few unusual areas of my body, and anxiously watched the formerly Vesuvius-like region of the wall and slowly unknotted the tension that had seemed to creep into every nerve of my body over the previous hour. I could hear the gears and hydraulics slowly begin to resume their comforting patterns and sighed softly to myself. If this was morning, I am well shut of it, I thought. And then I said aloud to the room now brightly lit by a morning almost passed, “I need a drink.”