Saturday 26 August 2023
I have discovered there is a women-plumbers company called Stopcocks. I shall be applying to work for them, in part at least because of their excellent name. I have fixed the downstairs loo. To say I am impressed with myself would be a massive understatement; I’m still bursting at the seams with an overinflated sense of my brilliance. I have, however, realised that a fair proportion of plumbers’ billable hours must be taken up on trying to unscrew various tightly screwed on attachments. Ditto trying to squeeze into or around ridiculously small and inconveniently shaped and blocked gaps. I didn’t do anything massively complex, unsurprisingly, but I wouldn’t have even entertained the idea of trying to do it myself if we’d been in the flat in London or if we lived somewhere near a town and a ready supply of plumbers. So the cost was merely for the part, about £33. It has made me realise there is a lot more we can do ourselves (I say “we” but I mean “I”; Chris has no practical skills or even interest in becoming more practical, with or without significant knee issues).
I say I’ve repaired it, I have in the sense of the flush working, but I wouldn’t say I’ve quite finished the job. It flushes, all seems secure. However, there is a cable attached to the new part that was a few centimetres longer on the old part and those extra centimetres are either required or a small chunk of the plastic cistern needs to be drilled out. As I feel I can claim the glory for fixing the flush, I have no problem asking Mitch next time he’s working here to make those final adjustments to securing the cable.
Yesterday, I made a splendid cheesecake, blackcurrant and coffee. My plan was to ‘dress it up’ and photograph it for a project I’m working on. However, the novelty wore off slightly while I was picking blackcurrants (but I did finally ‘stage it’ (and start eating it) after I wrote this). The birds completely cleared our blackcurrant bushes a few weeks ago. Weirdly, there is a cluster of blackcurrant bushes just over our fence between us and the neighbour’s paddock and those bushes are laden with blackcurrants. I asked the neighbour yesterday if I could reach over to pick some; she said yes. So off I went. It would seem that the blackcurrant bushes are where midges breed. I did manage to pick a handful of currants but I was very much on the front line of midge attack. Fortunately, I think they were young midges with minimal bite-potency. But there were hundreds of them. Horrid. And there were some nettles in their midst so my hands and forearm got stung. And then one of the neighbour’s dogs appeared. She looked happy enough as she had a toy in her mouth and I felt she had a friendly expression on her face. Considering I was at that point leaning over into ‘her’ paddock, I decided best leave it there. She made no attempt to bark or scare me off though, which I was particularly glad about considering she is a German Shepherd and the fence is low and merely wire and semi-rotten posts.
This morning, it is largely raining and grey. There is less than a week of (meteorological) summer left but it looks like we’ve skipped to autumn already. Well, that’s a bit melodramatic, it’s still green outside and not all the flowers have died back and the one deciduous tree I can see from this window only has a few yellowing leaves on display. We are doing a few shopping chores today and tonight we’re picking up our two local friends to go to The Gordon Arms for dinner tonight. First time out to a local (ish) restaurant for dinner with friends since living here. It is such a year of firsts.