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Saturday 16 April 2016

The Ryme of the Ancient Mariner, (Well just a brief quote)

“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 ..