We have not recovered the use of our bathroom.

Apparently, plumbers cannot do work before providing us with a written quote, according to French law. After many an attempt to align our busy timetables, the man comes to the house to evaluate the effort involved.
The man leaves indicating that we should hear from him shortly. Two weeks later, we have not heard from him.

We call the man and face an answering machine, requesting us to leave a message.
The man calls back one week later. He was ill. He can come but only in the middle of our exam week, three weeks down the road. We cannot go to another plumber unless the landlord agrees to it as he is footing the bill. We settle on the first week of P2 for an intervention. In the meantime, we are hoping for rain.

The plumber does not come.
We call again. The plumber was ill. Actually, he does not have a quote because it was one of his employees who was supposed to send us the quote but he did not do it and now none of them remembers what has to be done as no record was kept.

The plumber will come with the landlady who is paying a visit.

The plumber comes to the house only to realize that he cannot actually perform the work before a tile man artistically revamps the tiled wall of the bathroom. The tile expert is due to come on the following Monday. The landlord calls over the weekend to let us know.
One of my housemates is away for the weekend and will return only late on Sunday night. He and his girlfriend are not aware of the plumber conspiracy.

Monday morning. My housemate’s girlfriend is enjoying a lazy morning and walks to the basement to use the only available shower in the house, loosely wrapped in a towel.
When she walks back up, she hears a male voice in the bathroom. Thinking that it might be one of us, she is not in the least worried and leisurely wanders back into her bedroom, smaybe inging "I wanna be loved by you".

A minute goes by before she realizes that the male voice is expressing itself in French, ruling out most of the regular occupants of the house. She rushes back into her bedroom to swap her towel for more decent attire, and then knocks timidly at the bathroom door.
The tile expert, disturbed in his brain-absorbing task, looks up and greets in perfect slang the lady in satin. After a few minutes of lost explanation time in French, she signals to the man that she’d like him to leave a message, so that we can figure out what he’s trying to say. The man leaves the room as well as no traceable mark of his work, extirpates his thoughts from the emotional numbness in which the boring sights of the light pink tiles had pushed him and beings to craft out his essay.

We come home to find an abstract calligraphic piece of art. The message reads: “I have come. Signed: Mr T. Tile Expert”.

We do not know if we can use the bathroom or not. The landlord is unreachable. The plumber is ill. It is not raining.