A water expert came to look at our stream yesterday, for two reasons: the fact that water came through the wall of our house raises some worrying questions about the structural integrity of the tunnel the stream goes through under our garage, and up at the top of the waterfall, the raging flood eroded away some stones underneath a number of large heavy stones, and one day they'll come crashing down, possibly blocking the tunnel and creating a huge flood.
He turned out to be a really interesting guy, just as fascinated by underground stuff as I 🙂
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I keep forgetting she's not here and going to check on her in the dead of night, I think Al is taking her continued abscense harder than me. We've phoned mum and dad so much to check up and try to speak to her that I'm starting to dread the phone bill!
Not that she actaully seems to have noticed we are missing from her life - apparently she's been asking for Meeeme (Minni/any cat) but not for us!
She's also been ill again though they did tests and its definatly the chicken pox, wish we could be with her 🙁
I had stomache cramps that wouldn't let me sleep so got up at 3 am and started clearing stuff out of the cupboards in the kitchen. Then went with Barabar to look at linos and rugs for down stairs, got back and was ill - crashed in a big way and slept until Clair arrived at 5 pm. Feeling dreadful but we managed to get quiet alot of stuff cleaned up - which is hard due to there being no water - then Al cooked dinner and informed me an animal had shredded one of the black rubbish sacks so had to clear that up - probably a cat after the dispossed of cat treats.
Hurting lots, feeling sick - the lump in my belly is very pronounced and hurting lots and I just generally feel low and wiped out.
Sorry this isnt more upbeat.
Oh and we had to put the flood defenses back up becuase they'd warned of more rain to come 🙁
After the recent flood, the spring stopped working again. So once more, we went up into the field to try and dig up the pipework.
To recap, last time it stopped, we pulled out the ancient map my grandparents had made when setting up the spring plumbing in the field, and started trying to find either of the two header tanks. We figured that checking the state of the header tanks would be a good way to narrow the problem down. We didn't find either tank, but we did find a part of the pipework. Amusingly, it had a large iron stake nailed through the ceramic pipe, an earthing point for a nearby overhead electricity line. This made it easy for us to life away a broken of shattered pipe and observe a healthy stream of clear water down the thing, indicating the problem was further downhill; but the thick clay was holding the shattered pipe together perfectly well, so we put it back again and carefully packed it down.
Failing to find the header tank in good time, after having spent a lot of time digging around in heavy clay to try and exhume it, we connected a compressor to the pipe where it emerged from the ground by the house, and blew air up it. This caused air to bubble from the ground at a point in the field, but when the compressor was removed, a lot of mud spurted out of the pipe followed by clean water... it had clearly disturbed a blockage. So we considered it fixed for now.
But anyway, recently it failed again. And since there's no mains water available at the moment, this is a bit of a blow.
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This morning I broke down in tears - I knew it would happen at some point - in fact I was amazed that I got to almost a week without it happening. The pressures of having my home ripped apart and wondering if it will ever go back again was just too much. That and the fact the back refused to extend our overdraft and didnt even give us a chance to explain and all at the front inquireys desk 🙁
I did loose it a bit and demanded of the woman 'well what are we supposed to do now?' She then informed us that if we incure any charges over it then come back and tell them and they might not actually take said charges - sigh. This is all becuase I was supposed to collect payment from customers on Friday which obviously did not happen - grrr.
Still on the plus side it turns out that Jean hasn't got a bad tummy from the flood water but instead has chicken pox - in hind sight she was refusing to drink the tap water and informed me that it was errrr and hit the bicker repeatedly away and in fact got upset when I drank it to show her it was yummy water. I am actually quiet relieved about this.
The other bonus about today was that we traveled to a clients house today for a shower (blessed be the shower and all that lovely warm water and tap water - joy oh joy!) and the most wonderful vegatable resotto. It was simply fantastic food and this astonished me as it contained one of my dreaded foods - leek. I detest leek thanks to a chocking insident when I was in the about 10 but this tasted divine and the leeks weren't chewey - I never realised leeks could be non-chewey! 🙂
Building Maintenance | alaric | 
Tue 31st Jul 2007 5:47 pm | 
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