Water Works Etc.

  Friends who have read my comments on Facebook will know that we have been having problems with our kitchen tap. As you can see from the pic, it is of a type long superseded in the annals of French plumbing but it has served faithfully, I should imagine for at least 50 years and I had no yen to replace it out of misplaced modernity. It uses a 10mm washer which wears out fast, and the seating was worn so I had bricoléd it fairly frequently over the years.  Like a OAP it had developed a certain incontinence lately and had to be closed more and more firmly to stop it dripping. This proved its downfall, because the internal thread wore out a week ago and it finally died....
  It proved impossible to locate a straight replacement, and all alternatives had one insuperable draw-back--the inward-opening window just above it allowed almost no clearance above the pipe joint and all modern taps have long necks! It looked more and more as if the pipe-work would have to be hacked out of the tile work behind, not a pretty thought!
   However I had a cunning plan! If I replaced it with a brass, garden-type tap and used 2 linked elbow joints to lower the tap below the level of the cill, all might yet be well. Fortune smiled on this expedient and the result can be seen in the next pic. I don`t think it looks out-of-place with our butler-type sink, the tiles have been saved  and as an additional bonus it cost far less than a `posh` tap. DIY triumphs again!
  Musing on this minor victory, I was struck by the number of different skills we have had to acquire in living la vie rurale, quite apart from learning French. Vine trimming and harvesting, chainsaw operation and wood-cutting, dry-stone walling, roofing repairs and maintenance immediately spring to mind. What about sheep midwifery,lamb-rearing, sheep-shearing and foot-trimming, minor veterinary attentions to dogs and cats, plot tending with a cultivator, gardening(mostly Kim, that) jam making, preserving, the list is endless.
  Just to put the tin lid on it, another category has just presented itself in a most dramatic fashion!!! The fire alarm( smokey) in the kitchen prompted us to drop everything and race in there. Horror, the room was full of smoke and steam, a kettle was boiling its head off and overflowing on the top of the wood-burning cooker, and smoke was pouring out of the top of the stove. Either the kettle boiling over had started a chimney fire, or the fire had boiled the kettle over. Eventually I pulled off the cast-iron lid over the stove, red-hot of course, and poured a kettle of water into the back of the stove, which was well alight and starting to roar. The resulting steam smothered the fire as I had hoped and all is now calm. So I can add amateur fire-fighters to the above list!
   All`s well that ends well. Thank goodness for the smoke alarm!

       Bye for now, going to have a calming drink!