Retirement tasks. I’ll start this blog by apologising to my regular readers, yes both of you, that I didn’t post this blog on Friday or maybe even Saturday for that matter. The week was full of physical endeavour and so no room for intellectual activity like blog writing. The stuff in this blog was bad enough but then there was the vine planting (a topic for another blog) on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and that was it, week gone. They do seem to speed by these days for good or bad I’m not sure.
I have been known to hanker (strange word) after analogue times or the mechanical era before digital came along. Not at the moment, true, my new phone has started to come up with a strange error message and my email icon has mysteriously disappeared from the screen and I haven’t a clue how to fix it or whether I even need to.
But the analogue side of life hasn’t been very kind either. As I write this blog I’m waiting for the AA to come and wave their magic over our van. It’s old but still why when we were out giving it a bit of exercise this morning should it suddenly display two warning lights both saying quite bluntly – stop.
No clue of course as to why we should obey this command, just stop. So I didn’t, we drove the short distance home trying not to think about how far we and the two dogs would need to walk to get home if the van decided to take matters into its own hands and, stop.*
So we’d gone out shopping for a new ball cock, that’s all one word really, nothing to do with buying a ball – cock. The photo above is the clue. The toilet cistern (is that how you spell it?) had started to overflow down the side of the house. I could probably have lived with it but not Mrs Summerhouse, she wanted it fixing and, given we don’t have a plumber on our short-list of handymen, that meant me.
In my younger days there weren’t many DIY tasks I wouldn’t have a go at but those days are long gone. If we had a plumber on call, that’s what I would have done. But no plumber, no plumber who would come out for what, for them, would be a small job, no plumber we could trust to give us a fair price if he (or maybe even she these days) did come. So generally no plumber which, as I say, left yours truly.
Replacing the ball-cock is a very fiddly job even if you have exactly the right tools, which I didn’t. I have a lot of tools you know, just in case but not specifically plumbing tools. Anyway I tried and succeeded in breaking off the ball off the cock? Or rather the arm. In the end I was forced to remove the whole thing to redrill the ball and attach the arm again. What do you mean you couldn’t care less how the arm was attached to the ball?
Having taken the whole thing apart I then had the job of trying to get it back together. A tip here for none plumbers – make sure you take note of how it was put together or you won’t be able to reassemble it. Guess what?
It took me bloody ages to get the mechanism (washers, rings, nuts, clips- who knew there was so much to a ball-cock, cock?) back together in what I believed to be the correct formation. Guess what it wasn’t and when I turned the water back on, guess, what. You’re tired of guessing the obvious? Well OK, I’ll cut to the chase, the water shot out more or less everywhere and I was forced to turn off the water again and go downstairs in a sulk and watch my team beat the team that’s top of the league. God, or whoever s/he is moves in mysterious ways, does s/he not?
Which is why I gave up trying to save money by recycling the old parts and went to the nearest plumber’s merchants to buy a completely new one including a few bits I didn’t need, oh and the tool I didn’t have for gripping very large nuts. No, I’m not being vulgar. It was a very large nut that held the arm to the valve. No, you don’t need to know what I’m talking about, just feel the gist of it all.
Anyway I got it from the plumber’s merchants, paying a small amount for the bits and a large amount for the tool – a mongoose, one-handed slip joint pliers (see attached photo below). Who wouldn’t happily pay good money for something with a name like that?
Retirement tasks summary
And so to cut to the chase, again, I fixed it. True it’s still dripping a little bit but nothing like it was before I decided to make this week a fix-it week. So no music, nothing intellectual just physical endeavour of a DIY nature. It makes a change from the previous week, whether that’s a good thing, I’m not quite sure.
*According to the AA man the censor on the engine, was registering 120 degrees. I don’t know much about engines but even I know that’s too hot. But apparently the censor lies and it’s not really that hot at all.