Snell-Pym

Yes friends it is back - today in the Snell-Pym disastor sytcom we have exploding taps and clonking vans!

Five in the morning sleepily I moan at Alaric fro having a shower that early. He grumbles at me for leaving said shower on. There was a brief pause and he gets up to investigate.

Not the shower, no lo! It is the squeacky cold tape downstair the washer had finially gone and water was jettosoning out of it at a scary rate. And so poor Al hurts his hand trying to turn the stop cock off.

Now we had known the washer was going due to the squeak in fact we had bought washers for the tape over a year ago but could not get to the washers to replace them. On top of that we could not get the stop cock to completely turn off.

Then there was some confussion later in the day when I thought Al had told Barabara but apparently hadn't been able to find her and she came around to ask if I'd been having trouble with the washing machine!

After alot of talking round in circles before things became clear it was a wait for the emergancy plumber - who fixed it in under five minutes - he said to be fair it was only an easy job if you had the right tools becuase they are stupid tapes!

He was also impressed with our messures to reduce the amount of water lost - ie we put on the fitting for the hose pipe with a penny in it and then cable tied it to the tape and placed tea towls over it to reduce pressure spray.

It was a nasty day as I had left banana chutney half made the night before thinking it would be a simple task to finish it today - sigh.

Then I managed to loose the work I had spent all morning doing on the laptop as it crashed whilst I was saving - it somehow lost the stuff I thought I'd already saved as well :/ The whole file thing - I'm wondering if I forgot to do intermediate saves or something - what ever the cuase I was not very happy as you can imagin!

The Alaric leaves the house to go and help at another Cub group in a sort of exchange thing him and one of their leaders has set up. But a few minutes later he comes dashing back in the house in a bit of a panic as the van isn't starting.

Clonk clonk and the lights go out - so this ment I found myself helping to strip some copper wire to fix the positive contact on the battery and wating Al sand paper it. To our emmense suprise it worked and the van started but I think we are now both just waiting for the next incident to hit us full force!

SIGH

Over the Easter weekend Alarics Uncle Roderick and his duaghter Philippas visited - they arrived in Rodericks helicopter! Jean must be the only little girl to get shoe deliveries by helicopter! She also now waves and waits expectantly every time she sees a helicopter - planes, helicopters, cars and vans all get called too-too (her impression of a horn).

Barabara had the idea of doing an Easter egg hunt with her so me and Philippa hide some little chocolate eggs along the wall of the raised flower beds - Jean adored this though didnt realise the eggs were food!

Whilst Roderick took Barabara up for a tour of the villiage by air we made yummy mexician ffood which we fed to the unfortunate Phillippa who had spewed breakfast on the flight over. We also got to watch Jean enloy her new Weeee!

Sorry I couldn't resist this I just had to take a photo!

Thursday morning i.e. a week ago Al notices when he bends down to do some of the parking area that the front wheel of the van is bald on the inside. In fact it is more than buld it is down to the fibres - in the words of our one and a half year old uh-oh and oh dear!

The next day it is supposed to drive nearly to Wales!

So Friday morning sees us at the tyre place after dropping Jean off at Nursery on route. No problem they say - but then the wheel won't come off!

We had assumed that we had been bad and not noticed the wheel and it had been like it since the tracking was changed but we thought Uncle David would have told us or just changed the tyres! We really could not work out how we had missed it for so long.

The answer?

We probably hadn't missed it because the wheel was on really tightly at one bolt - who ever had last done the wheels had used the little gun thing they have with the torque setting too high and had cross threaded all the bolts - one of them had snapped off in the nut when they tried to take the wheel!

It was all a bit mangled - so we ended up spending over seventy quid when we'd been expected 10/20 Not happy. This of course also eat into the time we needed to get ready for going camping!

So now we are trying to track down the last time the wheels were changed/taken off - sigh.

Well we are not going anywhere!

Yep we are snowed in!

Unfortunatly we're supposed to be going to a Wedding on Saturday but we may not be able to get out of the vally to go :'(

Luckily we have (becuase I am paranoid) tins of baked beans, chooped tomatoes, spagetti, various soups, refried beans, bean sprouts, water cheshnuts, bamboo shoots, mushy peas, new potatoes and other sundres in the cupboard - not to mention cheese and jacket potatoes. We also have cooking plans for if the power gives out - ie jackets done in the fire and pastas and soups on the trangia!

The only problem is that without electricity we would be down to the fire (which we have plenty of coal for) and the parabolic gas heater - so we'd all have to sleep down stairs and put a blanket over the entrance to the stairs as all our heat tend to go up them!

As extra messures we have pegged a thick curtian sideways on over the kitchen window (pegged to the net curtian) - this is becuase the curtian rail still isn't up so we only have a net at the window - plus the curtains we do have for it are light summer ones - still need to make the thick wintre jobbys! Also closing the door to the office has made a great difference as has the insulating foam strips my Uncle got for us. The office is over the stable which is pretty open to the elements and its floor is basically floor boards laid over the beams so it gets a tad nippy in there. I am really not happy about how much heat we must be just pumping into the environment

Still we fixed the issue with the fire not burning hot enough and all the hot air going straight up the chimney - its called a tin foil sheet but more on that in a later post!

Here are some pictures of the grounds at the moment!

The crocuses are determined to flower anyway and the fur tree seems to be enjoying it!

The cows at the end of the drive didnt seem to bothered either - I couldnt beleive some of them where sitting down in the snow - mind due these are rare breed ones so are a bit more hardy.

Purely artistic this shot - I was looking for something that showed wintre and the forest in one.

I thought the stream looked a bit like it belonged in Narnia!

The Water garden looks so different from how it did in the summer!

We are starting to look like a packet of christmas cards I feel! - good job we made loads of fat and seed bird feeders last night with the scouts! I think the poor wildlife is going to need it!