Plumber Rob

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“Last week there was a tap on the front door”

“Our plumber has a strange sense of humour”

Actually our plumber is me. And last week I got to show my lack of plumbing skills when the hot tap in the kitchen suddenly stopped delivering water.

After spending a night worrying about blockages in the pipework and failing hot water cylinders I decided to start by buying a new tap. If that didn’t solve the problem the next step would be to call in a proper plumber.

The tap arrived on Friday and I started fitting it that morning. I instantly rediscovered why I hate plumbing so much. When it leaks you never can tell quite where the water is coming from. You can only really tell that it is coming.

The most important thing I remembered though was that you only tighten things as much as you think you need to. Then you leave it for a while to see how much it leaks and tighten a bit more until it stops. By the end of yesterday I reckoned that things were staying dry and now it’s officially fitted. And we have hot water in the kitchen again.

In search of stripy lawns

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I’ve had my mower a long time. It broke around 10 years ago when some little pins that linked the drive to the motor hub sheared off. My first repair, using the metal bits of treasury tags I had lying around was not successful, but my second attempt using steel nails worked a treat.

I got the lawn mower out last week, what with the grass starting to wave in the breeze. I had a look underneath to see how my repair was holding up. The repair was fine, but the bearing that holds the metal blades (lumps of sharpened steel that whizz around at amazing speed and cut the grass) seems to have collapsed. I can move the end of the blade up and down a worryingly long way. And since these parts are very close to my ankles when I’m mowing the lawn, I thought a new mower might be in order.

The mower has arrived. It turns out that mower technology has not moved on a great deal, but the new one does have a roller at the back. This means that I can get the same “striped” effect that you see on posh lawns and tennis courts. I hope it lasts as long as the old one did.

First BBQ of the year

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Well, that was fun. In celebration of a family birthday we had a barbeque this afternoon. I have a record with barbeques that can charitably described as “patchy”. Most of the time I can argue that this is down to the weather, which used to reserve special levels of downpour for our barbeque events. Although the attempt to start the fire using newspaper, which filled the neighbourhood with tiny scraps of burning paper, was entirely down to me. This time I settled for the special lighting fluid, and plenty of it. This went up a treat, and left a little pile of happily glowing coals on which we were able to prepare some sausages and burgers. Which were very nice.

Decaying Digital Ownership

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I bought a CD last week. It’s one that I already “own” having bought it from the iTunes store a few years ago. Unfortunately, the 10 tracks that I thought I’d paid for turned into 2. This is probably due to licensing changes that should not in any way be my problem. I suppose there are some weaselly terms and conditions somewhere that make this quite OK.

Anyhoo, the CD arrived today. I had to find a CD-ROM drive and then use iTunes to rip the music onto my PC, and thence to Apple music share so that it reappeared on my phone. So, after spending only 9 pounds plus a bit of messing around I’m back where I should have been if Apple had kept the promise that buying something actually means buying something. Modern life eh?

Do I dare?

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I got some new button batteries recently. Each of them had one of these stickers on which are supposed to taste horrible, to stop babies from eating them. I really want to lick the sticker to find out what it tastes like, but I’m worried that it might be coated with the same thing that the put on Nintendo Switch game cartridges (also to stop them being eaten). Apparently that is a truly horrible taste that takes ages to go away.

Getting the Cube MOT'd

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I’ve just organised the MOT for our Nissan Cube. This is an important part of car ownership in the UK. The test makes sure that your car is still mostly metal and has working brakes and things, which posed significant problems for a Mini I owned a very long time ago.

Unlike the very first lockdown, this time the garages are all open and MOTs will expire at the set date. The garage where I booked the test had lots of free slots, so I’m wondering how many people know this.

Cube Cleaning

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“A rolling stone gathers no moss” goes the saying. Unfortunately it turns out that a non-rolling white car gathers rather a lot of moss. Our little cube has acquired a bunch of green streaks that really needed to be dealt with.

So today I did. I’d read on the internet that toothbrush is very useful for getting little bits out of the various nooks and crannies in the bodywork. And so it turned out. The Cube is now a lot whiter than before.

Although I do get a funny taste in my mouth when I clean my teeth now…..

Drilling comedy holes

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I put up our Christmas lights last week, what with it being close to Christmas. I’ve not seen the neighbours getting out chairs and drinks to watch me work, but they should do. I’m quite entertaining when I try to do this kind of DIY.

First thing I had to do was make a hole in the garage wall. In previous years I’ve just threaded the power cable for the lights through the edge of the garage door. However my shiny new garage door fits a bit more closely, so the lazy way is no longer an option.

I carefully planned where the hole should be and got out my special long drill bit. I’m very proud of it. It can go through one or more than walls at once. I started drilling and the wall seemed to go on for a very long time. So long in fact that the drill got stuck. So I was forced to leave the drill hanging off the wall with the wire still connected as I pondered what to do next. It looked as if I’d hired the invisible man to do some DIY for me.

Eventually after a bit of fun and games with a mole wrench I managed to wrest the drill out of the bricks. I discovered that I’d drilled into the side of the garage. In other words there was no inside to this hole, it just went on for the length of the building and out of the back.

The second hole was much more successful, and shortly after that I had my lights up and working. I told number one son that I’d drilled two holes that day, one in the wrong place and one in the right place. “Oh” he said. “Which one did you drill first?”

Conducting currents

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The toaster failed yesterday. It did this at exactly the same time as the lights went out and the radio stopped working. Coincidence? I think not.

It turned out that one of the currents had fallen out of a teacake and landed between the element wire and ground. The resulting current flow (I like the way that sounds) had triggered the earth trip on that power circuit. So all I had to do was figure this out, and then go into the garage and flip the switch into the on position.

Current through currents is not always a win.