being wise around water......

Now there are times when a bit of thinking can save a deal of swearing and sometimes a short cut can turn into a longer route, a lot longer.

The New water pipe I put in before we sallied off to France is one of the many half completed jobs that are lurking at the moment.

Water is lots better than is has been for a very long time but in order for it to continue that way into the brrrr months of the year the pipe itself needs to be about a foot underground.

Now of course today's original plan involved collecting rather a lot of firewood, a trip to the wood yard in the Bedford showed a missing wood man and gave the delightful prospect of a non power assisted three point turn in his yard.

Back home then and thumbs were twiddled.

Trip back to the wood yard - no one there home for further thumb twiddling.

In a flash of inspiration I went outside and decided to bury the water pipes close to the house. The pipe burying job had been started by a Taliesin in a fit of helpfulness. Said fit though started and finished at the exact points the pipe lying on the floor meant he was banned from driving round the field. Once his driving area was restored he promptly went off and did something entirely different.

Now, the original route for the pipes was a bit sub optimal so, in a flash of inspiration I worked out that I could dig one trench, put both the pipes from the reservoir and the pipe from the pump in it and everyone would be a winner.

Of course this just meant moving the pipe which required either dragging it over the top of a tree or disconnecting it re running it and connecting it again. So far so good.

The water was in that condition that experts call "on", I could of course have walked half a mile up the mountain and turned it "off" but no, I thought, it would be simpler just to quickly break the joint, move the pipe then remake the connection the pressure here is after all never that high.

Taking full advantage of hindsight, I think a trek up the mountain might have been more sensible. The pipe came apart quite easily and the re routing was quite simple, joining two bits of pipe when one side of the joint has 5000 litres of water hell bent on escape proved just a little bit more "tricky", in a clouds of water and a pipe that was not about to go into the joint sort of way.

A few minutes spent noting that the water coming off the mountain is actually quite cold and I thought something a bit more scientific might be required.

Into the house I dripped and turned on all the taps so that instead of fighting the full pressure there was at least somewhere else for the water to go.

Back into the hole, that was now rapidly filling with water, noting that I really had intended to buy new wellingtons this year as the old ones......

Well anyway back in I went.

Generous amounts of wrestling, swearing enthusiastically in three languages, the joint was made, I went into the house in search of dry clothes and to switch off the taps.

All I had to do now was work out a route for the pipes to share a trench, dig the trench (using the digger whose battery Taliesin had cunningly hidden in his bedroom) and all would be well with the world.

I should have mentioned that prior to this a section of the water pipe ran over the surface, something we had dealt with by simply lagging the pipe with old army wool blankets.

The grass really likes the wool and had taken to itself to grow into the blankets which in turn required even more profanity in order to remove the pipe from the floor. In the end I resorted to fire engine tools but it was still not an easy task and handling the rotting wool blankets fell just a little teeny bit short of pleasant. At least I wasn't wet, no I was just coated in foul smelling mud.

This was the point at which I had the next sudden realization, the cable for the electric pump would not actually be long enough and therefore Plan A, one trench and two pipes was not going to work....

Dear me, I was pleased.

Of course in the normal run of things I would not have been doing this alone, management would have been there offering helpful advice, praise and encouragement.

She had of course chosen to absent herself, gone off in Xantia to the woodland where she spent the afternoon ripping trees apart and drinking tea whilst I had this enormously fun time.

When she got home she was a sea of sympathy, incredibly and genuinely sad she not been here, she was deeply sorry she missed it all, she could not decide if she would have wanted still cam or dvd recorder, Flickr or You tube, such a terrible big decision to make she said.....

Today though at least saw some forwards progress, it also saw something very rare.

Now, I am not picking on the foslings but it's a pretty rare day that we get one that is just us.

The management, me and our own children, the two D's had gone off with school to watch a football international and that left the 6 of us, nothing else to do then: off to the pub for tea. Taliesin though had other plans, he had an engine to put in his range rover.

This was a serious waste of time, food should be selected on the basis of what was quick to cook and quicker to eat.

In the pub and out immediately. Anything else was too slow....

The whole tea experience was a blur of exhortations to eat faster, talk less and could we leave now..

Back home and he's changing the clutch on the engine which "needs" to be in his range rover for the weekend, or so he says.

At least life holds some consolations, he has just found that the flywheel needs to be changed as well, I haven't the heart to tell him they usually only come off with explosives, some things he can find for himself....

R