Today is our first rainy day for quite some time. I would like to be able to say exactly how much time, but Simon’s computer is sick and in a coma, until it gets a graphics card transplant next week. And our wonderful all-singing, all-dancing weather station has nowhere to send all its amazing information at the moment. The senses are sensing but the brain is not perceiving. So, in the absence of anything approaching objective evidence, I’d say that my impression is that it hasn’t rained here for some weeks. In fact we have had a period of absolutely gorgeous summer-like weather, and I had sort of forgotten about rain and the impact it has on daily life.
The upside of the rain is that I am inside. And being inside, I can sit and write blog posts and such like, without feeling that I really should be outside enjoying the loveliness of it all, and doing outsidey sort of jobs. The downside is – well the same as the upside really. I can’t go outside to do outsidey jobs without getting very wet and quite a lot muddy. Oh, and also the house smells of wet dog. Which isn’t in itself particularly unpleasant, but it is very pervasive – so that I keep noticing it and thinking, ‘What’s that really strong smell lurking at the back of my throat that tastes like warm, mouldy mud?’
Anyway, enough preamble. Now I need to think of some amble……
Well, I could write about the massive excitement and joy (and nausea-inducing stench) that we experienced last weekend when we eventually discovered and uncovered The Elusive Septic Tank. But Simon, (who is in Ingurland at present, in the midst of visiting his parents and transporting them to and from his niece’s wedding in Nottingham) has threatened to write a post himself about this very item, on the grounds that he is the man with the photos to do such a post justice. We’ll see….. I wouldn’t hold your breath. Unless you happen to be standing anywhere near our No-Longer-Elusive Septic Tank, that is.
Suffice to say that I am mightily pleased to have found the object of much conjecture, but less than mightily pleased that its total full-up-to-smelly-leakiness means that we cannot use the shower, the bathroom sink, the washing machine, or – more significantly – the toilet, until Mr Septic-Tank-Emptying-Man comes next week to relieve us of our stinky accumulations. It’s a good job we have lots of land and no neighbours. And only a very restricted range of sanitary OCDs.
So…the computer’s f*cked. The septic tank’s f*ucked. What else is wonderful in dream land these days? Oh yes – the groupe de sécurité on the hot water tank (aka the thingy on the bottom that lets out the pressure when the water expands as it heats) is also f*cked, so that it is leaking water at a rate too fast for a bucket to catch overnight, which means that Simon has had to reduce the water pressure (using the water-pressure reducer he installed in the cellar last year to take account of such potential hazards) so that water emerges from the kitchen tap at the pace of a disabled snail in slow-motion. This has reduced the leakage rate to manageable proportions, but increased the frustration rate associated with filling water containers to distribute to the multitude of thirsty animals to titanic proportions. Sometimes (oft-times actually) slow can be such a wind-up.
It will be fixed. Soon. Just as soon as we can be arsed with the slow and laborious task of emptying the Very Big Water Tank (which of course can’t simply be emptied through the hot water tap, cos as soon as you turn off the cold water inlet pipe, a vacuum is created) to replace the faulty thingy. It’s on The List, anyway……
Actually this is another reason for me to be pleased that it is raining today. During the recent hot weather the pigs have amply demonstrated their instinctive desires to wallow in wet mud, to keep cool. After a few days of repeatedly (and Oh-So-Slowly) filling up their drinking bucket, only to have them immediately up-turn the precious water into the mud so they could roll about in it, I caught on to their hints, and took to pouring the water straight into the hollows they had already fashioned in the dry mud. I am a slow learner, but I got there in the end, and the hoggy little charmers have rewarded my efforts with much satisfied grunting and wallowing, and a significant reduction in the irritating up-turning of full drinking-water buckets.
They have also demonstrated their liking for grass clippings, which is good because it means that, instead of having to put up a load more electric fencing to allow them to graze on an extended area of grass, and risk having even more of our land turned into a cratered, grassless mud-bath, we can simply do the grazing bit for them with a mower and let them eat the results. There are two downsides to this approach. Firstly, because they don’t have to actually move much to get the food, they will get even fatter. Secondly, with all that lovely moist fibre in their diet, they are pooing SO MUCH MORE. And I think by now you know some of my many thoughts about animal poo, and my obsession with trying to keep it under some level of control.
Whatever…. it’s worth the hassle of the extended poo-collecting activity just to experience the fun of watching them run grunting excitedly to the gate, whenever they hear the switching-on of motorised machinery. I am liking the pigs a whole lot more these days – they really can be quite endearing when they put their piggy-little minds to it.
