We’ve enjoyed a quiet, calm, blue-sky, sunny kind of weekend, with the temperature in the sitting room on Saturday evening reaching a balmy 13° after having a heater on most of the day, and the office staying at 10° no matter what. Morning routine: Windows and door open for an hour or so while we go about starting the day – it blows the damp out of the house, and saves trying to heat the whole place to dry it out. Obviously, weather permitting, but it’s been lovely, if chilly.
A slight downside. The young soldier who lives downstairs has gone on leave, and we miss hearing him laughing and singing on his phone every night, but, unfortunately, he went away and left a tap dripping. This means the shared water pump on our bathroom roof is kicking in every 14 minutes. Yes, I timed it. It’s not using any water to speak off, because it only takes a couple of drips and the pressure falls, so the pump reacts, but it’s always the same sound at the same pitch. I can hear it from anywhere in the house, and it does it all day and night. So, I thought I’d do something about that…
For a long-story reason, our pump is plugged into a wall socket in the storeroom above the kitchen. This was a temporary measure put in place by our late landlord about seven years ago, and it works just fine. It also means, I can isolate the pump by unplugging it when not needed, but this means going outside, up a spiral staircase and up a huge step into the storeroom – each time. So, when this drip thing happens, we plug the pump into an extension cable which runs down to the bathroom, where we can unplug it when we don’t need it.
However, the door to the storeroom had swollen in the rain, so there was no way I was getting in there without a fight and some skullduggery… But I managed it, plugged in the new, controllable arrangement, and then couldn’t get the door shut again. Not without more banging with this and grumbling about that. Trying to move a snib 2 mm so the door will close is not as easy as it sounds, not when you only have one multi-purpose tool and no idea. Still, I got it to lock, and blissfully, I only hear the pump running when I know it is being used. The chap below will be back eventually and hopefully, he’ll give that naughty tap down here one last twist and shut it off. He’s moving out at the end of this month, by which time he will have just got the hang of it, only to be replaced by someone else, who may not.
Anyway, that’s how the week is starting here, and here’s what it looked like over the weekend.
