Ironic title, yesterday's. No water this morning; leaky pipe, nothing left in the taps. Memory of that delightful children's book 'The Tiger Who Came To Tea' by Judith Kerr (title and name both take you to Amazon sooner or later) and the line in it: the tiger, having eaten and drunk everything else, "drank all the water in the taps" (quoted from memory). Lovely child's eye view of where the water comes from. Most impressed.
So. There's a parallel reality in which we entertained a tiger to tea yesterday, and it drank all the water in the taps. Unfortunately, we're in the reality where we found a pool of water making a mirror of the tiles in the, er, laundry room, and were faced with the question: how do you put a bowl under a leak that's just above a stopcock that's right down at floor level in an accessible corner? Answer: turn the water off; damp string wrapped round the pipe to siphon any residual water; shallow baking tray for the other end of the string. It worked.
Today's early-morning entertainment? Filling watering cans from the well near the house, filling bathroom cisterns with well water from watering cans - and you can guess the rest. The ability to daydream about buying gadgets - such as, for example water pumps and lengths of hosepipe - comes in useful sometimes. And I don't know about you, but I'm generally okay with (almost) anything that has a 'back-to-nature' element to it - as long as it doesn't happen too often and there's the prospect of a qualified plumber in the near future.
Watched the sunrise first. My need - liking, desire - for early nights and early mornings. Like to see the sun rise, even if it does come up behind a cloud. The passage in the new Jim Butcher novel, 'Ghost Story', about the renewal that sunrise brings (see above re Amazon). My sleep cycle is now almost exactly opposite to that of the household teenagers. Isn't there an age when you're supposed to have returned to the sleep patterns of childhood?
So. There's a parallel reality in which we entertained a tiger to tea yesterday, and it drank all the water in the taps. Unfortunately, we're in the reality where we found a pool of water making a mirror of the tiles in the, er, laundry room, and were faced with the question: how do you put a bowl under a leak that's just above a stopcock that's right down at floor level in an accessible corner? Answer: turn the water off; damp string wrapped round the pipe to siphon any residual water; shallow baking tray for the other end of the string. It worked.
Today's early-morning entertainment? Filling watering cans from the well near the house, filling bathroom cisterns with well water from watering cans - and you can guess the rest. The ability to daydream about buying gadgets - such as, for example water pumps and lengths of hosepipe - comes in useful sometimes. And I don't know about you, but I'm generally okay with (almost) anything that has a 'back-to-nature' element to it - as long as it doesn't happen too often and there's the prospect of a qualified plumber in the near future.
Watched the sunrise first. My need - liking, desire - for early nights and early mornings. Like to see the sun rise, even if it does come up behind a cloud. The passage in the new Jim Butcher novel, 'Ghost Story', about the renewal that sunrise brings (see above re Amazon). My sleep cycle is now almost exactly opposite to that of the household teenagers. Isn't there an age when you're supposed to have returned to the sleep patterns of childhood?