Thursday 6 July 2023
King Charles is visiting Galashiels and Selkirk today so there are road closures around. Chris is driving to Innerleithen this morning to have a new tyre fitted and is hoping that (A) the slow puncture doesn’t speed up and leave him stranded or that (B) that doesn’t happen when a royal cavalcade needs to pass by. Hopefully, they won’t need to travel in that direction anyway but a royal visit will leave traffic chaos in its wake.
Well, would you believe it, I’m a whole paragraph in and no mention of water or midges. I saved it for the rest of the post. The midges have actually been fine thanks to the windy weather and I sat out in the sun yesterday morning to write and also had my breakfast outside. But I do have one bite on my lower neck that I’m struggling not to scratch at the moment.
I went up to the water tank a few times yesterday and the trickle is less reassuring, but at least water is still coming in and was a fast-drip/just-about-a-trickle. I also went up to the spring, where I ended up sitting for half an hour. I love it up there, quite high up the hill, quiet, a lovely view and knowing there is water beneath me. The pipe leading from the spring down to our tank seems to be airlocked again as there is water sitting above the pipe. I lent down into the spring, hoping to see the water moving slightly, but I realised I was huffing and puffing in frustration so much that the water was moving slightly, which got me thinking that the water was actually moving very, very slowly down the pipe. Once I moved my face away from the entrance to the spring and stopped sighing, the water stopped moving and, well, it was obvious that the pipe was blocked and we were back to just-before-the-trickle-became-drips-and-then-nothing. We have probably a week’s worth of water in the tank for now, albeit with ongoing water rations. We will both be away for short chunks of time this month so, hoping we at least maintain a drippy-trickle, that might help with the water level. We are at least having on and off rain again nowadays, though most of the spring water is going into the land around the spring rather than into our tank. Once we’re back, assuming the situation doesn’t sort itself out or Mitch can’t sort it on Sunday, we will have to call in another expert. But at least this time we seem to have isolated the problem and the area of pipe where the problem seems to be occurring. For all this stress, I then look out the window and I can see Mrs Pheasant and at least three of her – four – chicks sitting on a grassy bank – five. Ten minutes ago, Mr Pheasant was also in view, as was ‘our’ incredibly tall heron. The trees, grass and plants are green and there are splashes of colour from various plants and shrubs. Thank goodness we have so much loveliness around that the water issues haven’t quite yet overwhelmed us or detracted from the genuine pleasure of living out here.
