Seau Happy

You can never have too many buckets.

This was one of the profound thoughts that occurred to me while we were not-busy emptying (very slowly) our hot water tank of 200 litres of water, so that Simon could fit a new groupe de sécurité, and insert another water pressure regulator into the system, so that the tank would cease the endless drip-drip-dripping that has recently resulted in us having to us to limit our water pressure to an insanely irritatingly low level.

It was another one of those jobs that had to wait until we had somewhere easy to dump all that water, ie – a clean and sparkly, EMPTY septic tank. (Yes, I am still thoroughly enjoying the pleasure that thought gives me). Normally we would feel Very Guilty Indeed at the prospect of having to chuck 200 litres of beautiful clean drinking water straight down the toilet, but at least in our current situation it didn’t seem quite so unforgivable. The septic tank has to have a certain level of liquid in it at all times to function effectively, and if we’d filled it with a hose-pipe we’d still have been using the same sort of water (although given the way my bladder works these days – particularly in the middle of the night – I suspect I could have got the fosse up to a workable liquid level in no time, all on my own).

So, Simon turned off the water heating, and we showered and showered and showered until all the existing hot water had been appreciatively used up, and then, on Bank Holiday Saturday, Simon announced that it was time to Do the Deed. Except…maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he’d feel happier waiting until a day when the shops were open Just In Case. Just in case Sod’s Law got it’s dirty hands involved in the action in any one of a million possible ways, so that we would find ourselves in a situation where we couldn’t finish the job and/or stop gallons of water pissing all over the floor, without recourse to some part/tool/piece of equipment that would need to be purchased from a (relatively) nearby brico-shop.

But I knew Simon had been planning for this activity for some time, and had Made A List, and had got everything he needed, and was now just Making Excuses, because, well, why do today what you can put off till tomorrow? So I kept alluding to the impending task, oh-so-subtly, and making That Face, and uttering That Humph, until eventually Simon decided that probably everything would be fine and we might as well get on with it. So he took his radio into the bathroom (“Oh…. you’re listening to the football? Sorry, I hadn’t realised….”), and assembled his tools and bits in a neat row on the floor (exactly where I would need to stand to get to the bucket), and Began.

He turned off the cold and hot water supply at the taps in the pipes in the kitchen, turned on the washbasin taps, and opened the tap on the groupe de sécurité. Nothing happened. And apparently this was a Very Good and Unexpected Thing, because it seemed that water wasn’t just going to piss out the bottom of the tank at a rate of knots, and that perhaps we wouldn’t have to empty the tank at all in order to get the job done.

Next Simon approached the task of unscrewing the two Really Big Nuts between the bottom of the tank and the faulty groupe de sécurité. Bugger and Damn! He hadn’t got the Right Sort of Tools after all! He had two adjustable wrenches but a) they were too fat and b) they were apparently self-adjusting, and kept choosing to adjust to a size that was not-at-all-helpful-in-the-current-circumstances. Perhaps they were just being arsey because he had called them fat. Simon huffed and puffed and struggled and cursed, and I warned him against the cursing-of-the-hardware, as I feared it would exact its revenge in some horrendous and counter-productive fashion. Tools and tanks and taps and nuts all have feelings, you know. And in order to fix a hot water tank, one has to think like a hot water tank. (I learnt this very important fact from an early episode of Northern Exposure).

And while Simon struggled with the uncooperative wrenches, and with the repression of his desire to call the nuts all sorts of Bad Names, his aching body twisted into all sorts of unnatural contortions as he tried to reach the inaccessible, I helpfully commented that perhaps it would have been easier if we (he) had got round to moving the basin further along the wall, like we had ‘planned’ to do last year. For a moment I forgot that we Don’t Do Should-Haves. Luckily Simon reminded me. Forcefully.

But eventually something gave, and movement was detected, and another ten minutes of pain and endurance passed, and the nasty-and-hateful groupe de sécurité was free (with only a little bit of damage to the plastic isolating thingy that was above the top nut, and which might not be absolutely necessary to the effective functioning of the system, which was another Good Thing, because it was possible that the damage that the wicked wrench had inflicted on it might cause it to leak. Oh, for God’s sake…….!)

And it quickly became apparent that we would, after all, have to empty the whole damn thing of all 200 litres of beautiful, shiny water, because said water was indeed now piddling out of the bottom of the tank in such a wayward fashion as to be almost entirely missing the bucket placed optimistically on the floor below it. Simon lifted the bucket up, and as it became fuller and heavier and harder to hold at the only possible angle at which it could be held, given the confined space (caused by the wash basin STILL being in the wrong place, but we won’t mention that) we realised we needed A Plan.

So, here’s The Plan. We’ll stand the water-catching bucket on a chair so it catches more of the water. And as it reaches fullness, we’ll wait for a gap in the flow when the tank is sucking in air through the same orifice, so it can continue to let water out, and we will instantaneously remove the full bucket and replace it with an empty one. And this will of course require the involvement of two people because, having tried it solo, I discovered that it was not possible to concentrate on sneaking the empty bucket under the flow and holding it in exactly the right position with one hand, whilst removing the full bucket with the other hand, because (what with the damn sink being in the way and everything) you can’t reach properly to support the weight of a full bucket of water with one outstretched hand.

As with so many of the tasks that Simon and I have performed together over the last year or two, we soon established a rhythm. In the strangely small-but-slow period of time it took for each bucket to fill, Simon hunched over his new plumbing parts and read the French instructions with frowny concentration, and I stared at the slowly-filling bucket and went all Zen. And at the appropriate moment, just before the tank breathed in with a gurgling rush of air filling a vacuum, I readied the empty bucket and shouted ‘Simon’, so he would leap, as if surprised every time, to grab the full bucket with two hands and take it to empty it down the toilet.

And as so often happens in these weirdly repetitive and focussed activities, I soon found myself becoming One with the water tank. The sound of water falling and air sucking filled my mind. The anticipation of the exact moment to change buckets became perfect. The feeling of the wall’s relief as the tank’s weight reduced became tangible. And time expanded in that strange way that it does when you are fully engaged in something, so that the small waiting spaces between required action became immensely big, and musing could occur.

And this was when I started to Really Appreciate buckets. We were using a small white one with a flimsy handle, and a larger, stronger orange one. But the small flimsy white one has the benefit of a pouring spout. And suddenly I thought I should be using it to pour. So, instead of waiting for it to fill completely, I waited till it was only about five litres full, at which point it was just about possible, with a deft twisting-and-lifting movement, to get that bucket out of the way of the empty orange one replacing it, using only one hand. Which meant that Simon could go and make coffee, and I could then oh-so-carefully pour the 5 litres into the narrow spout of one of our collection of water carriers that we use to take water to the animals, whilst monitoring the progress of the filling of the orange bucket with my peripheral vision. And then, when all our water carriers were full, I could use the small-but-long bit of time while the orange bucket filled to run outside with the white bucket to fill various chicken and cat water bowls, and water trees in pots.

And when I had used the precious water in this way for every conceivable useful purpose, I could relax into the flow of fill-and empty, fill-and-empty, and drink my coffee, and contemplate the possible attributes of Le Seau Parfait. And the obvious conclusion that I arrived at was that there can be no such thing as The Perfect Bucket, because every bucket has its own raison d’être. Sometimes you want a bucket with a spout. Sometimes you want a bucket with a strong handle. Sometimes you want a soft and flexible bucket. Sometimes you want a thick and solid bucket. You want buckets for soaking washing, and mopping floors. And buckets for mixing plaster or cement. And buckets for animal feed and water. And buckets to catch drippy leaks. And buckets to collect chicken-shitty hay. And buckets to collect pig poo. And buckets to store kindling wood. And buckets for cats to sleep in.

And buckets to replace the ones that Lenny is now collecting in the middle of the No-Go zone of his field, because he won’t let me near them to get them back out after I put them in there with food in, and because the more I try to persuade him to nudge them into my reach from my safe position on the right side of the fence, the more he picks them up in his scary bitey teeth, and carries them further away.

And just as I approached the realisation that Buckets Make Me Happy, and that the ownership of a plentiful supply of them is highly conducive to my well-being, the water tank sighed its final gurgling breath and was Empty. So we left it for a little while, to allow the last few drops of its precious cargo to drip away, and when it was silent as a silent thing and dry as a bone, Simon did the clever bit of fixing on all the new and lovely bits and pieces without the benefit of my interference assistance.

And, lo and behold, much to Simon’s pessimistic surprise and my optimistic expectation, it all worketh perfectly and drippeth not.  And it is Good. The water pressure has been returned to normality and showers have once again become a thing of double joy. The water flows quickly as well as draining away quickly, and all is hunky-dory in our showering and toileting world.

And I think Simon is one very smart sausage, and a very capable plumber. And I have absolute faith in him, and totally trust that he will very soon fix the washer on the hot kitchen tap that has somehow become quite poorly, (what with all this upping and downing of pressure that’s been going on lately), and is becoming  stickier by the hour. So that one day, very soon, the hot tap will be un-turn-on-able. And I might conceivably have to buy myself a nice, new bucket for the carrying of hot water from the bathroom to the kitchen so that I can do the washing up.

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