A whole 54 days have passed since our last trip, which for us is a long time. Of course, the wedding fell in the middle of that (see my over-emotional blog regarding that) and, as ever, we have been extremely busy and at times almost in danger of catching ourselves up round the corner ahead.
We’ve had the pipe ‘incident’, which for posterity I should recall here. I have probably already bored many readers with the tale, so apologies for repeating myself.
Karen had arranged for the decorator to repaint the lounge. It needed doing and we have long passed the time when a main room like that is something we will do ourselves. It is just a source of arguments as we go along, and the decorator can do a far more professional job than we could in a fraction of the time.
At the same time, Karen decided to change the curtains and, on the day the decorator was due, got up early before his arrival to take them down. At one end of the room she wanted to get rid of the pelmet (which apparently I said 15 years ago that I didn’t like). However, in taking the curtains down she realised that the existing rail was in fact attached to the underside of the pelmet and not the wall.
I was summoned to quickly attach the rail to the wall as she didn’t want me drilling after it had been painted. I disagreed, as did the decorator who had now arrived, but the lady was not for turning.
I quickly marked the wall and prepared to drill the five holes needed while the decorator started covering everything at the other end of the room.
The first hole was less than 1cm away from the hole where the pelmet had been fixed, but I couldn’t use that as it was too big for the screw. When I drilled, it would only go in so far and I assumed I was perhaps hitting a lintel above the patio doors. After conferring with Karen, I switched the drill to hammer mode and applied more pressure.
The drill went in.
And water started gushing out.
It was black and horrible and I knew immediately it was from a heating pipe. Like the Dutch boy with the dam, all I could do was stick my finger over the hole and shout for help.
Karen and the decorator ran around trying to turn the water off and couldn’t hear me hollering that it was the heating system that needed switching off. Eventually, one of them went into the loft and propped up the stopcock in the heating water tank.
Once that was done, I realised that the water still had to come out somewhere. None of us knew how to drain the system, so I called for bowls to catch the water and relieve my by-now very sore finger and thumb.
It took many bowlfuls before it reduced to a trickle, by which time the wall was bubbling from the water inside and the carpet was soaked.
The decorator said it was pointless painting until everything was fixed and went off to another job. I managed to get an emergency plumber there within an hour and, some £600 later, with a large hole knocked in the wall, rubble all over the saturated carpet and six hours having passed, the plumbing and heating was fixed.
We got a plasterer in the next evening for a cash-in-hand repair and the decorator returned the following day. By that evening, apart from the carpet, you would never have known it had happened.
It was only then that I remembered we had accidental damage cover on our home insurance policy.
I must say, initially Aviva were great, right up to the point when they accepted the claim and passed it on to their outsourced claims service.
They were not happy that the problem had already been fixed. They said we should only have used their authorised contractors. I said I understood, but I just wanted the water stopped and the wall fixed there and then.
I did ask if they wanted me to knock another hole in the wall to satisfy them.
Fortunately, I had taken photos at various stages and they accepted those along with the invoices. By this time we had also had the carpet looked at and received confirmation that, although I had done my best to clean it, the Fernox in the heating water would slowly erode the plastic loops and we would eventually be left with a large bare patch.
So we agreed a settlement amount for that as well.
Karen was now secretly pleased, as she had wanted to replace the carpet anyway but me being The Grinch had vetoed the idea.
The new carpet should be fitted the week we return from this trip.
So what have I learned from all this?
Don’t put a curtain rail up in a blinding hurry. In our house, don’t trust that all water pipes run vertically or horizontally. And use a pipe detector — although even that may not have found this one as it was embedded in concrete.
A beautiful sunset from our Lounge.
I have also spent far too many hours rebuilding the blog website, which crashed when some of the software used to construct it became unsupported. Thanks to a month’s subscription to ChatGPT, the collective ‘we’ sorted it.
In doing so, I discovered the real mess that the ‘contractor’ who had originally built it for me had made. No wonder I had never understood how it worked. Slowly but surely, I got rid of the unnecessary parts and implemented what I think, for now, is a much cleaner and better look.
I feel I must mention the football.
It has been poor.
Very poor.
We are back to booing before they come onto the pitch to save time later.
I have no idea what the problem is this time, but they move the ball too slowly and there is a distinct lack of quality. Perhaps it really could be No Kenny — No Win, although we were almost as bad with him in the team.
Golf has been hit and miss, although now being able to play Barnham Broom for free occasionally is a nice bonus. The real pleasure, though, is the walk, company and chat as we go round.
Pickleball has also been very enjoyable on a Monday and is something I look forward to playing each week. For some reason, I find it very satisfying hitting a ball really hard at somebody.
We have continued being culture vultures, with a visit to London to see Sting in his own musical for our 44th wedding anniversary — I know, I deserve more than a medal. We also rode the postal railway which we enjoyed.
There have been several visits to the Theatre Royal and Playhouse as well, of which the highlight was, again, Operation Mincemeat — an intelligent, clever show.
I also had a day visiting my old colleague’s successful E-Type Jaguar garage in Letchworth and another visiting the jolly interesting, if you are into that sort of thing, National Centre for Computing in Cambridge.
Sadly, during this period with a wedding in it, we also had a neighbour’s funeral to attend.
Another downer for me has been the wedding video that I put myself in charge of for Barry and Ellie.
It was all quite fraught for me on the day, trying to do everything with Neil’s help. Sadly, the remote microphone failed without me knowing and so some of the sound isn’t great. Indeed, the speeches, which Neil ended up trying to capture while holding a single camera as the tripod had been left elsewhere, turned out to be a silent movie.
I have really beaten myself up over this and still feel rotten about it, but it was very difficult trying to be present and part of the day while also thinking about filming it.
Hindsight and all that, but a professional videographer would have cost thousands.
With some help, I spent hours getting the footage edited in the best possible way and Barry and Ellie have been extremely understanding about it.
There has also been lots of catching up with family and friends over drinks both hot and cold, and we both feel very blessed to be able to do so. We do still have to fit these around the days when Karen makes herself available for work.
Then there is the sorrowful thing that used to be my lawns.
Reduced to bare patches and tufts.
I have put so much seed down that it has mainly turned into expensive food for the pigeons and the partridge family — who just seem to enjoy me chasing them off.
That’s without the hare who has also taken up residence on the back lawn.
The back lawn, after loads of work, is starting to fill in, but the front is still dreadful. In the spring I will order loads of topsoil to dress it and then seed it again.
The other project which has taken up more hours than I would care to admit has been Part Two of the book and bringing the story of Mum and Dad to a conclusion.
I have finally finished the first draft, which currently runs to 140,000 words and 415 pages.
I know it could be shorter, but that wouldn’t do justice to their story, and that’s what I wanted to record — not an abridged version.
Is it any good?
Probably not but I can’t tell.
I am sure it won’t win any awards or be on the bestseller list. I have read and reread it so many times that I am no longer seeing the wood for the tree or the errors and inconsistencies. I have run it through different AI models to ‘proofread’ it, but I know they are very unlikely to pick up everything.
Currently, I am getting estimates again from professional proofreaders, but they are starting at over £2,000 for the work so I am unlikely to take up that option.
So instead I have for now loaded it onto my harshest critic’s Kindle for this next trip and I am sure Karen will delight in telling me everything that is wrong with it. Barry has also been pressganged into reading it.
I am almost certain I will self-publish it again and, in my mind, I am aiming for April/May 2027 — but who knows?
I am also wondering whether to merge it with Book One, correct the errors in there and publish the whole story as one enormous tome.
And so onto this trip — our annual voyage this time of year to Florida, this time slightly extended and with a return down to the Keys for the first time in years.
The ‘travel’ day(s) follows this.
