“Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.”
The Ryme of the Ancient Mariner - Samuel Coleridge Taylor
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You may well ask why I am waxing all literary this morning.
It's quite simple really, I just wanted to extol the wonders of French plumbing - again!
Went
into our bathroom at the crack of sparrow fart this morning, it slowly
dawned on me that my feet were suddenly cold - and wet:-(
Continental
plumbing in the widest sense with all of its countless vagaries is not
remotely akin to its British counterpart except that is designed
generally to supply water where needed but often where it is definitely
not needed. The toilet cistern is fed by small bore piping at mains
pressure, around10 bar. Because of such force any leak is soon
apparent, in this case from the obligatory tiny stopcock adjacent to
said cisterN
For
some reason the gland on the pipe/stopcock was leaking so I found a
pair of water pump pliers to gently tighten the coupling. Oh, innocent
me. The gentle drip now turned into a fine spray, not the desired
outcome.
After
searching for a few minutes I found a five litre water container to
catch the errant water but the spray pattern was too wide to go into the
container. More searching revealed a funnel which was placed into
neck of the receptacle but even that was not sufficently large to catch
all of water.
After
much muttering and head scratching another bright idea dawned, why not
wrap a flannel around the leaking pipe thus absorbing the spray and
creating just a single flow into the funnel. Eureka! It worked!
Having mopped the floor I gratefully returned to bed.
Breakfast
completed it was time to find a plumber. Hmm, plumber on a Saturday, in
France. In retrospect it would have been easier to have sought a visit
from David Cameron, not that his probable plumbing skills would be of
any use.
Eventually
one local artisan said that he would come on Monday for which I was
quite grateful. However I had forgotten momentarily that this la Belle
France. Undoubtedly he would arrive Monday but the crafty frog did not
sate which Monday.
I am not holding my breath ..
