I employed a Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors surveyor to do a medium value survey on the property - lowest merely acknowledges for the lender of the mortgage that the property exists and is not falling down. Top level guarantees much more, but this was several hundred pounds.

I don't mind him missing the immersion heater and associated problems, not his job to do electricals and plumbing. But the signs of the leak were there to be seen - if he had lifted the board over the rotten cupboard floor, or looked up at the bodged ceiling - I'm wondering where the vendor's daughter was standing, as I was shepherded about carefully.

I shall be writing. I have photographs. He had spotted the roof was soon going to need fixing, and the bottom of the down pipe was damaged.

Today I went over, quite by chance. I intended to go out briefly and get food I could eat without having to stand over the cooker, but the town was gridlocked.

Yesterday there was a fire in the Blackwall Tunnel, which takes commuter traffic from Kent into the City of London. It was closed. The Woolwich Ferry which does some of the same was only running one boat. The traffic jam stretched back fifteen miles to my town. It joined with the jam at the Dartford Tunnel, backed up with extra traffic which had heard about Blackwall, and str5etched back to Gravesend. Enough people came off the motorways to block all the local roads.

So I went over to the new place. It was raining hard, but no water was coming out of the drainpipe which runs through the fuse cupboard. It was running down the outside of the pipe. Investigation showed that this was a new pipe into which a narrower pipe ran, and was not sealed. I went to get some duct tape and a step ladder, and found that the pipe was full of water. After investigating local shops, I realised I had something useful at home.

Back through the traffic for an old plastic curtain rail and some old washing machine hoses. And a small stool to sit on.

After some time of poking with the rail, and twisting with one of the hoses (not connected to a tap), I removed mud, and small gravel from the flat roof, until, all of a sudden, out burst clean water. Over my right foot. So the leak should now be less of a problem.

Silly thing for the previous occupiers not to have done themselves.

Penny