The culvert up at the school is blocked and for the past week or so it has been raining as only it can around here. It rains a lot here - the annual average stands at about three meters (that's eight feet four inches in old money) - warm westerly air sails across the Atlantic, get very wet, hits cold mountains, dumps Atlantic on our heads.Bit of a bugger, but it's the price you pay for living in such a beautiful place (I assume it's still beautiful, I so rarely get to see it through all the rain). So! The culvert up at the school gate is blocked and overflowing. Water is streaming all the way down the road wearing huge pot holes in the side. Holly thinks it's great. She just stands there in the water in her wellies and the rushing water breaks over her feet like the water at the front of a speedboat.It is most peculiar. It looks like she is scooting up the road without moving. Needless to say she is usualy soaking when we get to school.
Today I realised that there was no need for all this water to be flooding the road at all. On the other, downhill, side of the school entrance is the ditch where the water should have been if it hadn't gone for a walk onto the road. All that was needed was some idiot with a mattock to come along and stand in the rain and dig a trench from the, very wet, side of the road to the, not very wet, ditch and all the water would be back where it belonged after being on the road for no more than a dozen yards. Being an idiot, and owning a mattock, I dug the ditch.
This evening was spent poking about the workshop trying to make some space in there. The place is an embarrassment. I've just been running in and dumping stuff then running away again for months now. It's a tip.This evening I bit the bullet and spent an hour in there trying to throw things out (hard). And moving things around (easy but pointless) and generaly trying to reassert my will on all the kipple. I hadn't been in there three minutes before I had tripped over the box of coach bolts I knew I had, and needed, last week but couldn't find even after a half hours searching. As it was, it turned out that I had missed finding them by much. They were buried under the first thing I had moved when I had started to look for them. As normal when I'm in there looking for something my first act had been to hide it.
Today I realised that there was no need for all this water to be flooding the road at all. On the other, downhill, side of the school entrance is the ditch where the water should have been if it hadn't gone for a walk onto the road. All that was needed was some idiot with a mattock to come along and stand in the rain and dig a trench from the, very wet, side of the road to the, not very wet, ditch and all the water would be back where it belonged after being on the road for no more than a dozen yards. Being an idiot, and owning a mattock, I dug the ditch.
This evening was spent poking about the workshop trying to make some space in there. The place is an embarrassment. I've just been running in and dumping stuff then running away again for months now. It's a tip.This evening I bit the bullet and spent an hour in there trying to throw things out (hard). And moving things around (easy but pointless) and generaly trying to reassert my will on all the kipple. I hadn't been in there three minutes before I had tripped over the box of coach bolts I knew I had, and needed, last week but couldn't find even after a half hours searching. As it was, it turned out that I had missed finding them by much. They were buried under the first thing I had moved when I had started to look for them. As normal when I'm in there looking for something my first act had been to hide it.
2 comments:
Mmm. Muddy Liam! You should have sold Tickets!
see this is what I find interesting...what are coach bolts? and are mattocks like spades or pickaxes?
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