Good morning, I hope you had a good weekend. I had a productive one, thank you for asking, though it started as a cloudy one. It has been very humid of late, which is what I assume caused the cloud you can see in the photo, because it was gone a couple of hours later. It’s all very well when it’s 40 degrees and dry, but when it’s only 30-something and damp, it’s a ball game of a different colour. Nothing like a mixed metaphor to start the week. Still, after the Saturday morning blimp, everything settled down into a warm weekend, with fans on when needed, and plenty of staying in the shade.
I was able to get a few odd jobs done. You can see one of them over on the right of this page. I put up the widget that lets you link directly to Neil’s 2024 Symi calendar. When you are ready to buy one or two, all you need do is click the image of the cover and you will head straight to the page at Lulu where you can place your order.
Another triumph of my weekend was to fix the light in the laundry. This is one of those jobs that has been waiting to be done for around two years, but which only took five minutes. Having turned off all possible fuses via the three main switches, and turned off the other one in the workhouse just in case, I took down the old light fitting, trimmed the wires, bunged on a new fitting, screwed in a bulb, and Bob’s your uncle, Fanny’s your maidypard, let there be light in the laundry again. So thrilled was I that I popped down to the Rainbow bar for a celebratory iced tea, and, on returning home, spent some time standing in the laundry flicking the light switch on and off and marvelling at my achievement.
While there, I thought it was high time I did something about the smell. Ever since we moved in here, there has been a lingering whiff of waste, to put it politely. Sometimes, it’s not so much lingering, but loitering, and at other times, it’s positively squatting. Clearly, there is an issue somewhere with the plumbing. I make sure the traps are watered, by which I mean, I regularly run water in the sinks which are otherwise little used, to ensure the U bends have water in them. That hadn’t helped. Then, about two years ago (only six years after first noticing the whiff), I took my courage in both hands and bought a new contraption of white pipes that join plughole to outflow pipe, and set about replacing the old one. As per usual with this house, there was an issue. The outflow pipe is meant to be slightly larger than the sink waste pipe so one fits in the other, and they are the same size, so you can’t join them. I found a workaround, fitted the new contraption and sealed it so there were no more holes where the whiff could escape. To be sure, I wrapped the joins in gaffer tape.
Still, the stink persisted, being worse when the wind was in a certain direction and even worse in the summer. Some days it was fine, and those are the days you say, ‘That’s sorted itself out, good.’ Of course, it never does. So, on Saturday, I addressed the back of the washing machine. When I’d fitted that in a couple of years ago, I’d packed a plastic bag in the gap between the drain pipe and the machine’s water-out pipe, but I noticed this had come loose. So, I pulled out the washing machine and the plastic bag (plus a roach which was investigating there – a clue to how the padding may have failed), and restuffed a new seal inside one pipe and around the other. As of 3.30 this Monday morning, I can report, no whiff. I even popped in there last night just for a sniff and could only smell washing powder. Possibly, a success. Time will tell.
At the risk of sounding overly manly with all this DIY business, and at the even greater risk of boring you to tears with my achievements, I’ll let you get on. I was going to take a look at the new plastic water bottles and their impossible lids, but I will have to leave that for tomorrow. Oh, there are so many exciting things to chat about… but they will have to wait.
