I was talking to a friend this week about jobs we have done previously, and I was reminded of this story when I fitted a gas meter in the wrong house in the 1980s.

Gas meter fitted in the wrong house.

When I left school, I joined British Gas as an apprentice, and when I qualified, I stayed with British Gas, becoming a gas service engineer. In my early days as a gas fitter out on my tools, I was part of a small team that replaced all gas metres over 20 years old. For 18 months, all I did was go to houses, take the old gas meter out and replace it with a new one. This is the story of one gas metre exchange that I did that didn't go quite as planned.

I pulled up in my gas board van outside the home to fit the metre in. It was an old cottage in a lovely garden that lay a little off the main road. I collected the new gas meter from the back of my van and walked to the front door, which was located in the centre of the cottage. As I approached the door, I saw a note attached to it addressed ´To The Gas Man´.

I took the note down and read it. It was from the person I was changing the gas meter for. The note explained that the lady had just gone to walk her dog in the field next door and that she would be back shortly. She told me that the kitchen door had been left open at the side of the building and asked me to go in and change the meter under the kitchen sink, the kitchen being the room I would enter through. It also said there was tea in a pot on the sink and to help myself to tea and a biscuit.

I walked around to the right side of the building and saw the door was open. I knocked on the door, but when I had no reply, I walked into the kitchen and found the gas meter under the sink, exactly where the note had said it would be. I quickly turned the gas off, changed the meter, installed the new gas meter, purged the air from the meter and proceeded to test that the home had no gas leaks. There were no gas leaks, and I then lit the burners on the cooker to check it all worked and then relit the pilot light on the boiler in the kitchen. After I had finished, the lady had still not returned, so I poured myself a cup of tea from the pot on the side and sat at the kitchen table, drinking my tea and filling in the paperwork for the job. After filling the paperwork in and finishing my tea, I carried the old gas meter to my van.

When an old gas metre had been removed, we had to pierce it using a pick axe. This was to prevent it from ever being used again if it was stolen from the van whilst I was in other homes. I put a big hole in the top of the gas meter, attached the necessary paperwork for it to be scrapped and put it in the back of my van. As I closed the van and locked it up, the lady of the house returned with her dog. She thanked me for going in whilst she was walking her dog and I followed her as she went through the gate back into the garden.

Things then started to get a bit more interesting. She walked around the garden and through a door to the left of the building into the kitchen. She looked under the kitchen sink and saw her old gas meter still there and questioned if I had done what needed to be done. I then questioned her why she had two gas meters and two kitchens in her cottage, telling her I had entered through the other door and changed the meter under the sink in the other kitchen. It was then that she told me that the cottage had been split into two identical but separate apartments, each with its own kitchen.

I explained that I had gone to the right of the cottage and into a kitchen there, and she explained that it was the other apartment and that Mrs Jones, who lived there, was actually in that morning. I explained that I had read her note and changed the metre but in the kitchen through the door on the other side of the cottage. She then worried that the elderly Mrs Jones hadn't been in when I changed the meter on the wrong side of the cottage. We both went through a connecting door to check on the old lady in the second apartment and found Mrs Jones hiding in an upstairs room. She had heard me at the cottage's front door, listened as I walked around the side of the building and knocked on her open kitchen door. Not expecting anyone and being very timid, she hid in another room whilst I worked in the kitchen. She had stayed hidden whilst I changed the gas meter, tested for leaks and then relit the appliances. She continued to hide whilst I poured a cup of tea from the pot and did the paperwork and continued to hide until the lady in the neighbouring apartment came home and heard her talking to me.

I had fitted the gas meter in the wrong apartment. The lady whose meter should have been changed profusely apologised for the misleading note that led to me changing the gas meter in the wrong apartment of the old cottage. I apologised to the old lady in the second apartment for scaring her.

I had to get another gas meter and switch it for the one I had changed in the wrong apartment because I had made a big hole through the old one, ready to scrap it. I then put the metre I had installed in the wrong apartment in the right apartment and corrected all the paperwork for the job. The old lady's gas meter was due to be changed later in the week so it had saved the job from having to be issued to someone else. Both ladies were now happy, and I had a story to tell when I got older.

The paperwork for both apartments had to be changed to show that the old cottage was no longer one cottage but two separate apartments with separate doors on either side of the building. I did go back sometime later for another job, and the ladies had now put a proper notice on the cottage's front door saying that it was now two separate apartments, and each separate apartment now had its own nameplate showing two totally different names.