Tag Archives: plumbing

Wednesday 21st May 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… someone visiting today who is obviously the brother of the electrician who came the other day, and presumably the brother too of that woman who came from that building agency previously.

And there’s no doubt about it – there aren’t half some unscrupulous people in the building trade who seem to make it a rule to prey upon the elderly and infirm. It’s enough to make anyone lose their faith in humanity, and I would certainly have lost mine by now, had it not been already lost a long, long time ago.

But anyway, more of that anon.

Last night was not as early as I would have liked it to have been. Tuesday is usually quite a good bet for an early night but for some reason it didn’t quite work out like that and I’m not sure why. It was after 23:30 when I finally crawled underneath the covers.

Once more, I was asleep quite quickly and I remember nothing whatsoever until … errr … 06:15 when I had one of these dramatic awakenings. That’s not as early as some mornings have been just recently, but it’s early enough.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was sorting out the medication in the kitchen, having already had a good scrub in the bathroom on the way past.

Back in here afterwards, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. When I awoke, I dreamed that I went to pick up the dictaphone. It was on the left-hand side of the bed rather than on the right in this dream. There was a large metal saucepan there and a few other things, and as I reached out for the dictaphone, I knocked off the saucepan and a couple of other things. I expected an enormous noise from this saucepan falling to the floor but I didn’t hear a thing. It all happened in perfect peace and quiet and there was no noise at all.

What I can say about that is that I certainly didn’t awaken. It’s true that the dictaphone should usually be on the top of the chest of drawers on the right-hand side of the bed and if it’s not there, then I’m completely lost. But it won’t ever be on the left-hand side of the bed because apart from an empty half of a bed, there’s a wall, with no room to put a table at all.

And then I was walking down Edleston Road when a white long-wheelbase Transit, S-registered but much older than that, came up the hill quite quickly. It suddenly shuddered to a halt right alongside me. A guy whom I knew, a guitarist from a rock group, leapt out. He asked me if the van had been going to him. I thought that it sounded OK. He replied “have a look underneath”. I had a look underneath and could see streams of gearbox oil pouring out of there. As he asked me “is there some kind of seal in the gearbox” I said “you’ve blown one of the seals in the gearbox”. I climbed into the van and it had a Borg Warner automatic gearbox but it was a completely different style to whatever I had seen before. It was hot and you could smell the oil, but it was quite obvious that he was going to go nowhere in that van. I didn’t have a spare gearbox for him. I spoke to my father and he didn’t know of any either. I thought that for these people, this is going to cost them an awful lot of money and make them late for a pile of concerts and they’d have to cancel a pile of concerts. It’s happening at a really inconvenient time for them.

The Transit was one of the very first Series One vans like the 1970 diesel Transit that I had when I was a rock star … "!" – ed … and ran for a while until a washer fell down the air intake, bent a valve and pushed the valve head through the crown of a piston. But an automatic van? That must be a nightmare to try to move when it’s fully-loaded

“Mettez-vous devant la fenêtre” someone shouted, so I had a look around to see if I could see anyone and began to think about moving my chair towards the window when I awoke. So I wonder who it was who shouted to me in French. There were quite a few people around the first of the month whom I knew and quite a few events that were happening where there could have been other people whom I knew who could have been involved I suppose, but I’ve no idea who shouted that out in the way.

So here I am, dreaming in French again. But I’ve no idea what was happening here, why someone should be shouting at me in French. And I can’t move my chair any closer to the window anyway because the aforementioned chest of drawers is in the way.

Finally, I was on my crutches at school organising the school wall transport and the car parking. Most of the students had turned up but there were still a couple who hadn’t come. I wondered when I might begin to expect them. Sure enough, a couple of minutes before 09:00 they appeared. One was a girl who was already on crutches and the other one was a girl who clearly having some kind of health issues herself. I made some kind of laugh and joke about it to them and they joined in. Their car was parked in a corner and it was really tough to access. They made a few remarks about that, mainly light-headed but you can never tell. I replied again. They asked for the keys. She said that she’d give them to me later. I replied “make sure that you do by tomorrow and no mistake” so she laughed. The two of them squeezed into this tiny car and reversed out of the car park, nearly hitting another car that was about to pull out. He just saw her at the last minute and stopped. Then they set off to drive out. I had a look round, and I was certain that every item of letters or parcels that needed to be delivered had been loaded into the correct vehicles and were all off and about on their way to deliver them.

Not that they would ever have let me organise the parking at school. Organisation is not my strong point, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And of all the people with whom I went to school, I can’t think of more than half a dozen or so whom I would be happy to see again, and I think that I’m seeing (or, at least, in contact with) all of those. I did not have a happy time at school. In fact, I did not have a happy childhood at all and a great deal of what happens in my dreams is not just about how my childhood was but occasionally how I would have liked it to have been. I ran away from home when I was 18 and, if the truth is known, I’m still running even now 50-odd years later.

Isabelle the Nurse was still in a rush this morning and didn’t have much time to hang around. She changed my plasters, dealt with my legs, fitted my compression socks and then cleared off to take more blood samples.

Once she’d left I could make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

This morning we arrived at Pevensey Castle in Sussex. And here we go again. At the top of page 362 he tells us that "the history of the building, though aided by passages in the public records, is mainly to be established by the study of the material remains. Those of the Roman period have fallen under the searching and very accurate notice of Mr. Roach Smith ; the present paper deals mainly with the mediaeval additions both in earthworks and masonry."

Two lines further down, he tells us that "The Roman fortress is in plan a rounded oblong, 220 yards northeast and south-west by 115 yards, and contains from 8| acres to 9 acres. It is included within a wall strengthened by towers, and here, as at Lyme, the outline of the plan was evidently governed by that of the ground on which the castle stands, and which rises 8 feet to 10 feet above the sea level and that of the surrounding marsh or meadow…." and then proceeds to devote several pages to tell us about the Roman remains that have "fallen under the searching and very accurate notice of Mr. Roach Smith" and so should be excluded from "the present paper"

My breakfast this morning remained unfinished because I had an interruption. An electrician, complete with apprentice, turned up to talk about electricity. His discussion was much more straightforward and his pricing much more closely aligned with what I consider to be appropriate, and he didn’t want to change the fusebox which was what I suspected. We’ll see what he puts in writing.

Back in here I had a radio programme to prepare and by the time that I’d knocked off, I’d done everything except choose the final track, although I do have in mind what it is going to be. I’ll know more when the notes that I’ve written so far have been dictated and edited.

There were plenty of interruptions to my schedule today. Firstly, there were a couple of disgusting drinks breaks. Then the taxi came to pick me up for my dialysis that I don’t have today.

My cleaner came to do her stuff too, and then Rosemary telephoned me for another one of our marathon chats.

However, we also had the plumber. His first comment was "we’ll have to move the sink"
"Why’s that?" I asked
"there’s only 74cms between the wall and the sink. You can’t have a shower base less than 80 cms"
"Oh really?" I asked, knowing full well that the one that I fitted in the farm was 70cms AND IS STILL AVAILABLE. In any case, I don’t want a shower base – I want a flat, tiled surface, so it should be made to measure.

Apart from that, he told me that to fit a 80cm shower base (which I don’t want) we have to move the sink.
"Won’t that mean moving the pipework?"
"I can do that" he said
"But if you move it more than 5 cms you’ll cover up the electric plug" I replied
"I’ll move that too"

We than moved into the WC to talk about the cistern where I want a cistern with a small sink on top like you see in Japan.
"You’ll be better off with a new WC bowl too, to give you some more height"

So that was another workman firmly but politely shown the door. I think that I’ve about given up on finding a workman who wants to carry out my project. Instead, they all seem to want to do their own at my expense.

Tea tonight was a lovely leftover curry with enough left to go into the freezer for another meal. and no pudding tonight – I wasn’t all that hungry really.

Instead I’m going to go to bed and dream about workmen and renovation disasters. It’s becoming exhausting, all of this organisation, when in theory it should be so simple.

But seeing as we have been talking about kids driving cars to school … "well, one of us has" – ed … there was very, very little of that in our day. Our generation was lucky to have had pushbikes. Some peope didn’t even know what a pushbike was.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the famous baseball player and coach Lawrence “Yogi” Berra is quoted quite often here. He came from a poor family of Italian immigrants but his wife, Carmen, came from a more comfortable background.
They had three sones and Carmen told Lawrence one day that the eldest, Dale Berra, needed an encyclopedia for school.
"Rubbish!" retorted “Yogi”. "He can walk there like I did".

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Sunday 10th January 2016 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S MAGNUM OPUS …

… I suppose you are expecting something similar today. But Sunday is a day of rest and so if you think that I’m going to be working as hard as I did yesterday, typing out another 2200-odd words, then you are mistaken. You’ll have to make do with a mere 1556.

Mind you, Terry was back at work again this morning. Still a small leak from the stoptap under the sink. That’s down to a worn tap and the turning on and off yesterday has aggravated the wear. Being Sunday of course it’s not possible to find a replacement and so Terry resolved the issue simply by turning the tap fully-open, as tight as he could make it with a couple of spanners, and the metal-to-metal contact has done the trick. It means of course that you can’t now switch it off, but it won’t leak until the next trip to Brico Depot when he can buy a replacement.

Apart from that, I’ve been doing some of my 3D Animation course, although I can’t find the enthusiasm for this like I did with my course on Hadrian’s Wall, and on one of the support sites for the 3D program that I use, there’s also been a mega-sale for items that would fit a couple of my characters and seeing that I didn’t manage to treat myself to a Christmas present this year I treated my characters to a couple of new outfits. It’s an ill-wind that doesn’t blow anyone any good, even a 3D model character or two.

We had an excellent tea too. I’ve been having food fantasies again (I’m not sure why because I’m anything but starving being here right now), this time about boiled potatoes, broccoli and vegan pie. I’d even bought a head of broccoli last time that I was out at the shops. And sure enough, Liz conjured up something magnificent, consisting of vegan pie, boiled potatoes and broccoli. It really was a superb meal and I enjoyed every mouthful.

As for my nocturnal rambles, I suppose that you are waiting for something quite stunning, following the incredible rambles of the last few days. It’s not quite as dramatic as that because I imagine that whatever part of me goes off on these journeys is as exhausted as I am. But last night was certainly different.

I remember quite clearly going to bed, I remember switching off the laptop, but the next thing that I remember was waking up at 04:50 with the bedroom light still burning brightly. I must have been absolutely shattered to crash out just like that.

But I do remember quite a lot about my journey last night and, seeing as how at 05:00 I was wide awake after a trip down the corridor, I sat down to type it out.

I was in Belgium, in my old Vauxhall Senator, parked in Brussels in one of these large squares in front of a big building or monument with steps leading up to it. I’d rigged up some kind of temporary curtain out of a grey plastic sheet so that I could have some privacy in there while I had a doze but it wasn’t very effective. In fact, it was only when I installed myself in the back seat and pushed the surplus plastic over the back of the front seat that I was anything like comfortable. But from here I ended up in a police holding cell there, along with about 20 other young people of both sexes. It appeared that I’d been in a car with a girl called Annick (whose family name began with “C”) and she’d been driving but somehow in the confusion, I’d been arrested instead. After a while an officer came into the cell and said that he’d been in contact with as many family members as possible for all of the different people in the cell and that bail had been arranged for most people. When he called out their names, they would be taken out to sign the papers and then they could leave. And so gradually our ranks thinned out. And then some older woman came in and called out “Annick C….”. I explained that it was probably me, and explained the circumstances, so she crossed out Annick’s name and wrote mine down instead. I said to the girl standing next to me, a very tall, thin young blonde girl, very nervous, that it’s worrying when even a junior member of a foreign Police Force knows my name and my identity well enough to write it down without even asking me to give it. Clearly, I’m well-known to the Police in Brussels. And we ended up chatting, with her telling me that it was her first time ever being arrested and in a police cell. So I gave her some reassuring talk. An older man put his head around the door and called “Annick C…”, to which I once more replied that it was probably me, so he told me to come along. I gave this girl the “thumbs-up” sign to encourage her and set off with this old guy. He was clearly British, with a working-class Northern England accent so I asked him what he was doing here and how come he’d found employment in a foreign police force. He explained that he’d come over, ended up driving a bus full of children with behavioural issues, and “then we’d lost touch with each other”. He clearly seemed to know who I was but I had no idea about him. He took me into an office – a really big office with a huge table, about half a tennis court in size. I was to sit at one end and there was someone else at the other end. There was a small pedestal fan on a filing cabinet there, making a terrible racket so I asked if I could turn it off. “It’s my office” he growled.”Fair enough” I answered, “but I can hardly hear you”. He walked over to me and said “what would you do if I did this?” and gave me a huge kiss on the mouth, so I pushed him away and asked him whether he meant that for “Annick C…”. His response to that was to call someone else in, a big man in a pork pie hat, who proceeded to put my head in a head lock. I had realised by now that the purpose of this noisy fan was to flood the room microphones so that the police misbehaviour and the screams of the victims would be drowned out on the tape recording of the interview (this is a typical Belgian police tactic), but this headlock was puzzling me. It wasn’t hurting me at all or causing me any discomfort whatsoever, and I didn’t see the point of it.

So having finished dictating my notes, I snuggled back under the quilt and I was off again. This time, my father was there (my nocturnal rambles are becoming much more like a family reunion and that’s a frightening thought, if ever there was one) with his annoying habit of calling everyone insulting names. Anyway, I’d had enough of this so the next time he did it, I smashed a bottle across the back of his head and killed him. I found a large wicker basket, lined it with a large plastic bin liner, stuffed him into it and filled it with water. And then I hid it in the corner of the garage of an office where I worked. I disposed of his two dog leads (why would he have two dog leads?) anywhere about the place. As luck would have it, I found an identity document – not his but someone else’s – which resembles nothing like an actual identity document, and carefully scribbled out the owner’s identity details, making sure that I left just enough visible so that a really good investigator could read, with some effort, the identity, and then hid it near the body. Of course, eventually the body was discovered by some woman and the police were called. I was rather worried, wondering it I ought to have done so much more to hide the body and wondering if the identity card ploy had been careless, but I reckoned overall that it would run the police up a blind alley for a good while. I would have run much more of a risk by trying to dispose of the body just after I’d done the deadly deed.

I can’t believe the number of family members who have appeared quite recently in my nocturnal rambles. There were all kinds of issues in our family over the years. We weren’t really a family at all but, just like the family in the superb Frank Sinatra film Tony Rome, a “bunch of people living under the same roof” and in the end we made the decision that, like the Knights of the Round Table in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we would go our separate ways. It was the most intelligent way to put an end to all of the difficulties that we were facing.

Since then, I haven’t spent any time thinking about them and they, doubtless, have returned the compliment and so what’s going on with them playing major supporting roles in my rambles?

Weird!

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Saturday 9th January 2016 – WE HAD SOMETHING …

… of a minor crisis here today – like waking up and finding a puddle on the floor of the kitchen. First job therefore was to dismantle … "disPERSONtle" – ed … the kitchen unit where the sink was. Sure enough, one of the water pipes was soaking wet.

This meant turning off the water and checking all of the joints. One or two rubber washers inside were rather perished so Terry replaced them all, and then switched the water back on. And sure enough, five minutes later, more water!

After lunch, further inspection revealed that one of the braided tap-hoses seemed to be distorted. It’s not that it ever is so cold in the kitchen that the water would freeze and burst the hose but it didn’t look right at all, and after an exhaustive search, Terry couldn’t find a spare one. So off to Montlucon and Brico Depot (a round trip of 110 kms).

He was back after 40 minutes. Passing by St Eloy, he noticed that the plumber’s was open. It costs twice as much in there as it would in Brico Depot, but it saves on time and on fuel. So crawling back underneath the cupboard, he wielded his spanner and … CRACKKKKK … the bottom of the tap broke off. There was a hairline fracture in it and it was this that was causing all of the problems right from the beginning.

So it was off to Brico Depot anyway, and all that I can say was that it was a good job that Terry didn’t go there before to fetch the hose. That would have been the end.

So now we have a nice new tap which works perfectly.It’s the same design as the ones that I bought for my shower and my sink in the shower room back home, and probably the one that I will buy for my kitchen, whenever that might be ready to need one.

But we needed one to do all of the washing-up after Liz’s glorious meal last night. A basil-flavoured tofu stir-fry with noodles and it was gorgeous too. And I had ice-cream for pudding – after all, I can’t have any more until that is finished.

Talking of finished, I certainly was! When the alarm went off, I switched it off and went back to sleep. It was only a car pulling up outside that woke me bolt-upright. The neighbour’s car, not the nurse’s as it happened, but I didn’t know that at the time and shot down the stairs, missing my footing and falling most of the way to the bottom. And after the nurse went, I crashed out again on the sofa until Liz and Terry came down.

There is a reason for this however, and that is that once again, I’d been off on a couple of mega-rambles. And these were so enthralling that I woke up twice during the night and dictated them immediately into my little machine. And it was only on typing them out that I noticed the first couple of them – I had no recollection of it at all and it does make me wonder what else that I’ve missed.

The first part of all of this concerned a young boy – aged about 11 but looking about 7 or 8. We were back in mid-Victorian times and in a court room. He was charged with stealing a barrel of beer that he and a friend had sat down and drank. While the hearing was taking place, he was in the dock being violently ill everywhere, crawling on his hands and knees on the floor. In the end, the bailiff of the court, someone like John Wayne, sitting on a chair, took this boy onto his lap but the boy carried on being violently ill. In the end, the judge said something like “this is totally insupportable. We can’t possibly continue with the case like this!” This was quite true as it was clear that the boy wasn’t capable of understanding anything whatever of the procedure in his current state.

I then had something going on, involving me and someone else being chased by a dragon. This was something to do with where I was working and although I recall nothing of this and it was a surprise when it appeared on the dictaphone, I did hear myself say, when it had us trapped in a corner, that I wish that this dragon would clear off and let us get on with some real work.

From there, I went on to dealing with some issues of Marianne, who had miraculously come back to life. Nerina and I were looking after her (in the same way that Cecile and I did) and she was living in a duplex apartment, part of which were premises where I was working, on the floor below. I was down there trying to work and trying to do loads of other things too. but to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … Marianne passed on once more, and her body was still in the apartment – it not being possible to find someone who could come and take her away. It was Monday and no-one could come before Thursday. Nerina came back from where she had been and we had a chat, and I wasn’t sure whether I should allow her to share my bed or even stay the night, with all of this confusion going on right now. It was quite late by now and I was ready for bed at this moment, in my jammies and dressing gown. We were having a little cosy chat around the table in my room and suddenly, the door burst open and my boss from a job years ago, an absolute swine, stuck his head around the door, and cleared off again. And Nerina had to clear off as well. I escorted her to her car. Now earlier on in the day, I’d been having trouble with a TV camera – it would show TV programmes if you pressed the correct sequence of buttons but this was such a complicated sequence that I had managed to do it once but never again. ever since, every time that I pressed a button it made the boom arm collapse onto my head or something like that; So after Nerina left, I was out on this car park having yet another play with this camera. And then HE appeared again, brandishing a pink brochure of some kind. “Mr Hall, how DARE you tell the tea-lady that I was going to be here for the St Something-or-other (which implied that he was going to be at a dance that was taking place on that day)?” but my response was that I had said nothing of the kind. “I said that you were going to be here ON that day – a completely different thing altogether!”. He burst out laughing (for a reason only known to him) and said that he would see me about it in the morning. “Be afraid – be very afraid!”. Naturally, I thought that this was totally ridiculous.
We’re a long way from finishing yet. After a trip down the corridor at about 03:40 (having a timer on my dictaphone comes in quite useful) I was back in the arms of Morpheus and this was yet another really bizarre voyage. I could only recall some of it and I wish that I could remember all of the rest. For a start, I wish that I could remember who I was with. It was another young girl, bearing more than a passing resemblance to the much-maligned Percy Penguin (who doesn’t appear in these pages anything like as often as she deserves) but it wasn’t her, however it’s someone else that I’m sure that I know too. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we were in New York and after a major ramble (I couldn’t remember a thing about this ramble when I awoke) but we found ourselves at the tip of Manhattan, in Battery Park (although it’s nothing at all like the real Battery Park) and the park was quite high up, but surrounded by tall buildings, which meant that there was no view of East River, except in one particular place where the building was quite low. We were waiting for a certain ship that was going to dock at a certain quay – Quay 34 if my memory serves me well (as Julie Driscoll once said). This ship displaced 26,000 and a few tonnes which was quite small (such is the logic of these night-time rambles). We had no idea where Quay 34 was but in another astounding fit of nocturnal logic, a small ship would go into a small quay and that would be where this small building would be. Seeing it is one thing – being able to arrive at it was quite another, so we set off in the direction that we thought would bring us there. The idea was to walk all around the edge of Manhattan and hopefully we should arrive at it. A short while into our walk we came to the Deutschlander Tör – the gate that leads into a small Park in Manhattan that had been given in perpetuity to Germany by the USA Government for some act or other – it was not part of the USA but part of Germany. The gates were wrought iron, black and gold, about 4 metres tall and with impressive emblems. Crowds of people were milling around, photographing them, and just as I went to take a photo, a woman directly opposite me went to photograph them from the opposite direction. We would each have included the other in our photos. So we had a smile and a laugh, and I called out “one, two, three” and we took our photos simultaneously. Once we had sorted ourselves out, the girl and I continued our walk into the park. Here, we met up with a coach party, ours of which we were part, in fact, that we had somehow managed to miss during our ramble around the city. They were preparing to leave, but we weren’t. And in any case we weren’t going back with them an the day that they were flying back but staying on and going to Canada. I was looking for the toilet because both of us needed to go. A park guard pointed us in the right direction, indicating a girl in the distance with an orange “Home Depot” plastic bag. The entrance was right by there and he would walk up with us. One of the women from the party offered to come with us as well, and while we were chatting to the guard, this woman was talking over the top of our conversation, saying how inconsiderate some people were, talking loudly while others were trying to have a conversation, the irony of what she was doing having gone completely over her head. And everyone on this coach was urging us to come back as the coach was leaving at 19:30 as they were flying out at 21:00, despite my explanation that we weren’t coming back with them anyway but going on to Montreal (although our proposed route would take us nowhere near Montreal, not that this has ever bothered me in a nocturnal ramble). We eventually arrived where the guard had indicated, and what there was was merely a window sill that everyone was using. I let the girl go first and I went second. But – once again – who on earth was this girl who was so familiar?
Strangely enough, some of the scenery and background, particularly of the bit about the route to Canada, has appeared in a nocturnal voyage a while ago when I had flown to New York and hired a car to take me out into the rural area to the south-west across the Hudson River where I could see the surreal urban landscape of the city and the enormously high elevated highway that would bring me back to the city.
And this isn’t all, either. In the 15 minutes that I dozed back off to sleep after the alarm, I was gone yet again. I was in France, back at my house (although it’s nothing like my house at all) and I decided to go for a bicycle ride along the trails in the woods. I went on the blue and silver racing bike (I really have this, rescued from a house clearance a couple of years ago) which had no brakes and no gears. On a particularly steep bit across the ravine I could see the neighbour’s children having a great deal of fun amusing themselves and looking over at them, I stalled and I just couldn’t get the bike going again no matter how I tried. I pushed the bicycle up the steep hill towards the houses and the shops and there at the top of the steep bit, coming down the hill on a bicycle was a girl aged about 11 or 12 in a tube top kind of outfit, cycling past the houses and the shops. It was at this point that the car pulled up and slammed its door – the real car outside – and I was off downstairs.

And that’s your lot for today – all 2237 words, another new record, and most of which is total rubbish. No wonder it took me so long to type it. I really ought to be charging you to read this rubbish. Don’t forget about the Amazon links aside.

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Wednesday 17th June 2015 – I’VE BEEN DRILLING ….

holse chasing drilling for water pipes les guis virlet puy de dome france… for most of the afternoon.

I need to route all of the water pies – the cold water in, the hot water in, the hot and cold out and the hot and cold central heating – around the house, and where the water tanks will be going is in the attic right above the shower. The shower room and the kitchen where the sink will be are right in a vertical row one under the other, and so I’m planning to route all of the pipework down the inside of the stud wall.

The central heating is a later addition to the plan, and as well as that, I’d only made provision for the other water pipes in the top rails of the stud wall. Hence, there were 22 holes to cut and I’ve done 18 of them this afternoon.

As we’ve actually had some good weather today, I’ve resurrected the little 330-watt mains drill and that has made rather short and effortless work of the drilling.

Or it would have done, but I soon discovered why I hadn’t used it for years. The on-off switch is broken and so the drill is permanently “on”. That makes for some interesting moments when I’m starting off with the drilling.

I’ll finish all of this tomorrow and then I can finish off with the plan to fit the worktop. I might even have finished it off today but I crashed out for an hour – and I mean crashed out too. I was well-done.

This morning I started on my website, trying to resurrect all of the notes that I have lost, and that’s not easy. It’s going to be a lot of work and I’m not looking forward to doing it all again.

After that, I’ve been working in the garden. Yes, even though I said I wouldn’t this year.

But this was urgent as I had a load of stuff, including the beichstuhl, to take down to the compost heap. But I couldn’t get down there, seeing as the weeds, brambles and everything else have totally overwhelmed it. And so for a good hour and a half I was hacking my way down there.

But in a change, I’ve put the smaller container, the 15-litre one – in the beichstuhl. This will mean that it will have to be emptied more often, as it will fill up quicker, and that suits me fine. It’ll keep the compost bin turning over and keep the shower room healthier.

As it’s sitting low in the box, I’ve propped it up by taking the telephone directories upstairs and put them underneath the container. That raises it up and that’s much better. I’ve also put the bin bags and the shredder upstairs too so it’s all to hand.

And so I’ve had an easy night tonight. Day 2 of the aubergine and kidney bean casserole that I made yesterday and forgot to mention.

I was on my travels during the night – or, rather I wasn’t for I was here. Someone with whom I used to be very friendly back a few years ago was here too and we were watching my ocean-going yacht arriving down the little lane here. It took hours for them to unload it – in fact they still hadn’t finished by the time that I woke up, even though this guy had gone downstairs earlier to chivvy them up.

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Thursday 4th August 2011 – Having waxed so lyrical …

… about the surprising people who follow this garbage, it’s only fair that I comment that there are, would you believe, some people who don’t actually follow it. Yes, this afternoon while I was working outside, Simon turned up in his van
“I was just passing by so I thought I’d drop by to help you unload the oil tank”.

Yes, if he had seen Tuesday’s entry, he would have known …

But while we are on the subject of oil tanks, I may well soon have another. Anne, who sometimes reads this rubbish, saw that I had been given Simon’s, and she wondered if I would like hers as well. “What are you going to do with them?” I hear you ask. That is simple. One will be at the top of the bank and the other one will be at the bottom. They will be connected by a pipe with a series of filters in line, and the idea will be to tip used waste oil into the top tank, let it settle for a while, and then run it through the filters into the bottom tank. With the reasonably-clean waste oil, I can then refine it.

And so with being up fairly early this morning I had a good day outside. I’ve finished the shelving (well, as far as I can until I can sort out some more wood) and I’ve moved the paint from out of the barn into this little room. There will be lots of other stuff to follow it and that will give me the space to tidy things a little. I’ve already sorted out the plumbing stuff, and that makes a difference.

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