Time to blog

Did I mention "back to routine" in my last blog entry? Hmmmm. Life has taken a bit of a u turn in the meantime, the kind of u turn that happens when one has elderly parents. Last Friday, my Mum (Edna) had a stroke, so much of the week has been spent in Hull at her bedside, relieved by every small step of progress and doing our best to be patient, for this is likely to be a long haul. However, the prognosis is good, the improvement so far has been remarkable and we are optimistic that she will make a good recovery. In the meantime, however, she is in Hull and we are, for the most time, in Gloucestershire, some 200 miles away. We'll post updates on her progress on our family blog, Here and Now, link in the sidebar.

Thank you to everyone who has emailed good wishes and sent love and kind thoughts. All are greatly appreciated.

The time of year

We're back home now and the domestic routine is kicking in. An empty fridge means a trip to Waitrose was planned for this morning and decisions to be made. What to eat?

When we left, all was summer - strawberries, raspberries, salads. This morning, sure enough there were still plenty of berries and salad stuff, but somehow I wanted to buy root vegetables and mushrooms - and then I spotted the dark beauties over in the corner.

The damsons had arrived. That means one thing for us - Damson Gin.

A speedy decanting of last year's Damson Gin into bottles was called for, making the demi-john available for the new crop. Oh, and of course, we had to do a full and thorough sampling to make sure it met with our strict product standards.

Do you think the fruit crumble will pass muster?

Normal life returns

We can clean our teeth with tap water again!

But then....

Shortly after writing that last blog entry, I went off to bed with the hum of the water pipes like music to my ears. Just after eleven thirty, the electricity went off. We looked outside and thought it might be the whole village, but no, it was just us. And there was a suspicious hissing coming from the garage.

Mark's yell of horror didn't really convey the magnitude of what he found - a joint in the water main had burst in the corner of the garage and it was shooting a huge fountain of water up, over all the fuse boxes and electricity supply, flooding one side of the floor and streaming out under the door. The thing was, it was in between the house stop-tap and the mains stop-tap, and we couldn't reach down the 4" square, 2 ft deep pipe to turn it off. The quantity of water was unbelievable, the range and force of the spray made getting anywhere near it impossible.

Help was at hand - or rather in Calne - in the shape of the amazing young man who has been working on our bathroom, who had been trying to turn off the water earlier in the week and had similar difficulties. A phone call to him shortly before midnight resulted in a generous offer to come out and sort it for us - Severn Trent Water were telling me that emergency calls were taking over two hours to answer at that point. He told me it was just chance that he had a kayak strapped to the roof of his van when he arrived!

Half an hour later, having been sitting in a puddle several inches deep in this corner of the garage, whilst fighting a torrent of icy cold water to access the joint, we all reached the conclusion we had to turn that water off somehow. With a bit of Heath-Robinson ingenuity and a long piece of wood, that's what he did. The joint was soon repaired, water restored and a text message to the electrician requested an early call this morning to check the fuse boxes etc.

By 8.30am all was back to normal here. The garage was dry, we had running water and electricity too. I can't say I had the best night's sleep but hey, there's always tonight.

Unless something else awaits. Let's hope for no further excitement, please. Oh, and we intend to invest in a gizmo to reach that stop-tap. Don't want to repeat that experience in a hurry!

Cause to celebrate

...with a load of washing!

We went out for supper tonight with Mark's sister, down from Scotland for a few days. Though we took the precaution of using their facilities before coming home, we needn't have bothered, because when we arrived back we heard that magical sound of water in the pipes.

I sit here accompanied by the blissful sound of the whirr of the washing machine and look forward to showering at home in the morning.

No more buckets!! Hooray!!