The December Rush: Why Every Job Becomes Urgent the Week Before Christmas

Every year it goes the same way. November ticks along quietly, then somewhere around the 18th of December, the phone starts going like a fruit machine. And it's never anything mysterious — it's always the same handful of jobs that somebody noticed back in September and thought 'I'll sort that nearer the time.'

Well, nearer the time has arrived. The in-laws arrive Thursday. And that stair rail is still wobbling.

The Christmas Eve Classics

We keep a mental list of the festive greats. The back door that's swollen shut with all the damp and won't latch before the turkey goes in. The boiler that's been making a funny noise since August and picks Christmas Eve to make a very different noise. The stair rail that's been loose since the summer barbecues and suddenly matters enormously when Auntie Jean, who doesn't trust stairs anyway, is staying over.

One year we got a call on the 23rd from a chap whose kitchen tap had chosen that exact week to give up the ghost. His exact words: "I know it's a cheek, but there'll be eleven people in this house by tomorrow teatime." We went. Of course we went. There's a mug of tea and a mince pie in it, and honestly, there's worse ways to spend the 23rd.

But here's the thing — that tap hadn't suddenly failed. It had been dripping since Bonfire Night. Nine times out of ten, the Christmas emergency is just an autumn job that got postponed.

The Jobs to Book in Before the Frost Does

If you want to avoid joining the December panic, a short list worth dealing with while the weather's still on your side:

• Doors and locks that need persuading. If a key needs a wiggle and a shoulder, it needs looking at. Cold, wet weather makes sticking doors worse, not better.
• Loose handrails and stair fittings. Cheap and quick to fix in October. A genuine hazard by Christmas, with a house full of people and a couple of sherry-laden uncles.
• Dripping taps and running loos. Small faults get bigger in cold weather. Washers and valves are a ten-minute job — until they aren't.
• Boiler servicing. Nobody books it in summer, which is precisely why every heating engineer in the county is fully committed by mid-December.
• Gutters and downpipes. A blocked gutter in November is a nuisance. Frozen in January, it's a leak in the spare room.

None of these are dramatic. That's rather the point.

Five Minutes You Can Spare Yourself

A few bits you can genuinely do without ringing anyone:

• Lift the trap in the loft and have a poke about with a torch. Insulation squashed flat, daylight where it shouldn't be, or last year's decorations balanced on a pipe — all worth knowing about now.
• Run every tap in the house once a fortnight. Unused taps in cold spells are the usual suspects when a pipe goes.
• Check the seals round external doors. A £5 roll of draught excluder does more for a cold hallway than most people expect.
• Bleed the radiators before you actually need the heating all day. If they're hot at the bottom and cold at the top, that's the job.

A Word About Booking Early

We won't pretend we can always rescue a Christmas Eve call-out — some years we can, some years the diary's full and all we can do is help over the phone. That's not us being difficult; it's just maths. There are only so many hours in a December day.

The customers who never have a festive drama are the ones who rang us in October about the thing that was only slightly annoying. It's a ten-minute job in autumn and a stressful one the week before the big day.

So consider this our gentle nudge: if something's been on your mental list since the summer, put it on an actual list and give us a bell while the diary's still civilised. And if you do end up ringing us in that frantic week before Christmas — well, we'll do what we can. There's usually a mince pie in it for everyone.