Cast of Thousands

Today has been replete with incident, not to say, interventions from Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke, and Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all. At quarter to eight, someone rang up –  à propos of a singularly bad mannered driver who swooshed past on loose chippings at 50 miles an hour yesterday, and threw up a pebble which made a hole in the windscreen – a bloke retained by our insurance company looking for directions, who was proposing to turn up and fix it with some kind of magic polymer. We were subsiding dozily once more, when fifteen minutes, later someone else turned up from the insurance to check if the first guy had been in touch. Ten minutes after that,  a general suspicion of heavy machinery suggested that clearing off the lawn had been resumed, and that we might as well get up.  Half way through the morning, our plumber’s A team appeared, much to our relief (the middle aged, competent ones, not the laddies with the heavy tattoos) and began looking into the water situation. Shortly after, so did the windscreen man who had meanwhile driven from Dundee. Then someone else entirely turned up to clean the windows – which, fortunately, is achieved using water he brings with him using a sort of pressure hose system. The digger driver, meanwhile, was roaring to and fro methodically destroying the lawn. The dog was in seventh heaven, since all of them in turn said, 1) ‘I see you’, 2) ‘what are you saying?’, and 3), ‘are you smelling my doggie?’, all of which adds up to labradoric bliss even without the surreptitious handouts which so frequently follow upon these ritual utterances. Then Tony turned up to clean the house, which the continued absence of a water supply made just a bit complicated; however, there are such things as hoovers and irons in the world so he was persuaded to get on with stuff even if he could not pursue the regular sequence by which he sets store. Meanwhile, the plumbers reappeared from distant explorations, with a complex narrative about silt, and investigated our UV water filter. This is the inmost layer of defence after the settling tanks, and it turned out to bear a distressing resemblance to an elephant sized used teabag (though I do assure sensitive readers that the UV treatment, which is actually the important bit, is not thereby rendered ineffective). However, clearly it had been copping a good deal more fine silt that it was designed for, and so we rushed off into town to get a replacement. I don’t like to be too definite but they have all gone away, we do seem to have water, and both the hot and cold tanks are full. Jolly, jolly, jolly, good.