Good morning Negative-Soundbyters! Hells teeth it has been miserable in London over the last few days; the big grey cloud that seems to actually sit on your head and the dreary drizzle that seeps into your clothing – and of course the icing on the cake: ♯Southern Fail or as I call it ♯Southernrailsucksass who continue to do their best to drive (or not as the case maybe) their customers (or suckers, take your pick) to drink (and hence kibosh their attempts at dry January). “Tis the season to be jolly” has since been replaced with “Is January fucking over yet?”
Anything of geopolitical significance to discuss this week:
Yes, I have one. I started a MeetUp group dedicated to running up-and-down hills in the Streatham Area. I got a massively curved eyebrow from Mrs H on this one, but in my quest to try and keep “creating” I thought I would give the idea a try. Lo-and-behold I accumulated 15 members over the past week; and there I was thinking that I would be the sole group member – and organiser! I briefly looked through the profiles of my group – one was involved with another 230 odd Meetups. That felt like quite a few to me – a sort of serial Meeter-Upper! If I get this person to my MeetUp I know I will be on the right track. (Get it….track, running…yeah whatevs Hoddy). Another emailed to say he was not a runner but was looking to get fit as he was training for an event later in the year. He even RSVP’ed. The night before I emailed the Group with the sprint distances and what we would be doing. Needless to say I was the sole hill sprinter on Saturday morning dressed in orange lycra standing on the corner of Streatham Common. All the others had run screaming for the hills ☺ (see what I did there….)
But I will persevere with this I think and see where it goes. Parkrun has about a billion members and you run 5km around a park. Come on people, running up hills is way more exhilarating!
Onwards and Upwards I say…towards this week’s anecdote.
Big love to all!
Hoddy
Plumbing.
This is not something I know anything about. When I turn a tap I just expect water to come out of it. When I turn the heating on I expect the radiators to warm up. That’s just what happens. As the sun rises, so it sets. Simples….
Ah that’s a negative Jim. Not if you live in the UK.
Kels and I live in a semi detached Victorian House. It dates back to the 1880s and of course the plumbing has evolved (sort of) over the years. “Trying something to see what happens” is not the adage one should apply when dealing with a house like this and a potential plumbing “issue”.
We happen to be building an extension that has been proceeding very slowly (that’s another NSB – in fact there is an entire volume of Soundbytes in that) but my builder is a good guy and tries to do his best by us. Anyway a few weeks back we had an outdoor pipe that was constantly leaking and nobody could work out why. You can see it coming, can’t you….
“Why don’t we try and this and see what happens,” said my builder in reference to the water tank in the loft.
Well we tried that and my oath, with all due respect to my builder, it was the kakkest (“shittest” in Afrikaans) idea that he has come up with since he started on site in July. The domino effect of that fateful decision; well – it was costly let’s just put it that way.
It felt like it might have been an issue with the stop-cock but of course if you stop a stop-cock from regulating the water level in the tank, you will eventually run the tank dry. And that’s what we did. And hey-presto, multiple air-locks in the pipes. (I know all this now – post ante!) So when Mrs H went into our bathroom to turn the shower on and water dribbled out of the showerhead, well, let’s just say she wasn’t happy.
So I mobilise and start running around like a headless chicken sticking my head into every conceivable cupboard to see if there is anything that I can press that will solve the problem. And of course all I can see are pipes – everywhere! I mean it’s like some crazed Italian cook fired up some spaghetti and just started tossing it around the house.
Next port of call – my builder. Again with all due respect to him, but that was another kak idea. While he was able to diagnose the problem, he most certainly was not able to fix it. He bought all his 42 years of building experience (note not plumbing experience) to bear and lets just put it this way, I will never get those hours back, and neither will he. An early warning light should have gone on when he pulled his ipad out to start looking for a solution on the internet. Er…not so much.
He had me running around – still like a headless chicken – turning taps on, and then turning them off. Our house is multiple storeys so one minute I was at the bathroom at the top of the house and the next minute I would receive a muffled instruction from the attic to go and check the taps in the bathroom on the floor below. I am not sure I have ever actually pleaded with a water faucet. But on multiple occasions I found myself begging God to make water appear. This went on for about 5 hours until my builder decided that there was nothing more he could do. The fact that he hadn’t done anything, well…..and to be fair I should have called in the experts much earlier in the day, when the first arched eyebrow made an appearance….!
I made the call and an actual plumber arrived with all the appropriate plumbing tools and lo-and-behold, problem solved within two hours.
Moral of this story: don’t let your water tank dry and if anybody other than a qualified PLUMBER offers a solution, ignore them and reach for the phone – and your wallet!
OUT!!
Pic of the week:
From my time in Moscow. I love the way the setting sun has illuminated the Kremlin and the richness of the ochre coloured Vodovzvodnaya Tower (I looked that up on Wikipedia!)
