THE JOY OF PLUMBING
An elderly couple is brought into the 21st century
I’m driving along a road in Leicestershire, in the tidy heart of the English countryside, where
slick green fields roll out on either side to the horizon. I drive through the village of Shenton, a
quiet place without so much as a pub, past prosperous-looking farms and neat brick houses.
And then I pull up outside a rather shabby bungalow. Around the bungalow is a sea of mud.
Between the road and the bungalow there is a ditch, chocked with weeds, with a little muddy
stream trickling along it. I push open the door of the bungalow to find Albert Juttus, a gentle-
looking 73-year-old, sitting in his front room before a tiny heater running off a cylinder of Calor
gas. He’s lived in this house for 46 years, and in all that time his only source of water has been
that muddy ditch.
Albert had lived his life in total obscurity until las week when the local council awarded him its
biggest-ever grant, over $40.000, to transform his tiny property. It will now by connected to
running water, given a new roof, windows and doors, as well as a lavatory, a sink and a
shower. His wife, Grace, has moved temporarily into a nursing home while the work is in
progress. Since the announcement of that grant, the council has been rather shown up by the
interest that Albert Juttu’s belated journey into the 21st century has attracted: front-page
coverage in the local paper and visits to his humble dwelling by television jounralists. The
council said they’d have acted sooner, had they known about the Juttuses, but the couple had
obviously been slipping through the net for a long time.
But Albert Juttu’s life isn’t just an odd curiosity: it says something about communities and how
they work, or don’t work, in Britain today. Having become rather frail and vulnerable in the last
few years, he and his wife were heavily reliant on the good nature of one neighbour, who
declines to be named. Her tales of their neglected life strike a chill into your heart. “Every time
I came back from seeing them my son would say, “You’ve been down at Albert’s”. The stink
was so bad in their house it would get in my clothes.” The couple, who have no family, did not
realize they were entitled to an improvement grant. “We have never had very much, but we
have always had each other,” said Albert, “and that’s all we ever wanted. We’ve never been
comfortable with the idea of handouts.”
And it would be wrong to see Albert Juttus as just someone to be pitied. In many ways he’s a
real survivor. Fleeing from Estonia in 1946, he came to Britain without knowing a word of
English. After a succession of low-paid jobs on farms and in mills, he found work in a nearby
tyre factory. He had friends there, but although he knew he was the only one without running
water and electricity, his only thought was of the bills they must have had to pay each month.
“I didn’t think I could deal with those big bills,” he remembers. And didn’t they tell you to get
your life together? Juttus looks a little shocked. “They wouldn’t speak out of turn,” he says
quietly. So this man, living on a labourer’s wage, with a wife who didn’t work, clearly believed
he was just locked out of the lifestyle that everyone around him took for granted
So how did change ever come to this little house lost in time? Albert Juttus, in his bizarrely
modest but oddly practical way, decided that it was indeed pretty hard getting water out of
the ditch, but that it would be easier if he had a proper well. So some time ago he asked a
health worker whether they could get someone to dig a well and their case was referred to a
charity called Care and Repair. Shocked beyond belief by what they saw when they visited the
house, these people began to put pressure on the council to rectify the situation.
Doesn’t Mr Juttus wish he’d managed to change it all much earlier? “it’s too late to wish now,”
he says, stubbing out a cigarette. “Times never return.” And clearly something in him even
feels ambivalent about the new life that looms ahead. “it’s easy isn’t it, you just switch a
button or turn a tap, it all just happens. But, I’ll get spoilt. They’ll be bringing me slippers and
pipe next,”
It would have been a lot easier for the council if he had agreed to move into a spanking new
home on a smart estate, but he wouldn’t do that. At the back of his house the view sweeps on
and on over green fields and to the soft surge of low hills fringed with trees. “That’s the good
thing about the country,” he says, looking out over the familiar prospect. “You see long
distances, I can sit out before sunset, when the birds start singing. I wouldn’t like to move.
What for?”
1- On arriving at the Juttu’s bungalow, the writer was struck by
a) its isolation from the rest of the community
b) the ease with which she entered it
c) the contrast it made with the surrounding area
d) the beauty of the countryside in which it was situated
2- What does the writer suggest about the Juttus’s case in the second paragraph?
a) it has brought the couple a great deal of unwanted publicity
b) the media have helped to bring about the changes
c) the money paid out to the couple is excessive
d) in has reflected badly on the local authorities
3- In the third paragraph, the writer puts forward the view that there
a) has been a general decline in respect for elderly people
b) is a reluctance amongst older people to accept new circumstances
c) is a lack of unity among people living in the same area
d) may be generational differences in attitude towards self-sufficiency
4- What does Albert imply about his workmates in the tyre factory?
a) they were probably earning more than he was
b) they did not appreciate how lucky they were
c) they had more right to running water and electricity than he did
d) They were not the type of people to interfere in the affairs of others
5- What does Albert feel about the changes to his house?
a) he regrets not making them before
b) he is uncertain whether he will like them
c) he thinks the council could do more
d) he cannot believe how fortunate he is
6- In the last paragraph we learn that Albert does not want to leave his house because
a) a suitable new home has not yet been offered to him
b) he is mistrustful of the local authorities
c) the view reminds him of where he used to live
d) he is very attached to his surroundings
