The loo works! Errrr, well no.....

So lots going on yesterday with the plumber men arriving early to finish the plumbing. Lots of tapping, grinding, and walking to and fro in studied silence. Meanwhile, I shared my time between washing up, and raking, turning, and spreading the hay.

I have a theory that the items needing washing up have frolics when no one is around, that the cups, plates, saucepans, cutlery, and everything else needing a wash, mate with each other and make more of themselves. I had a pile to do. There must have been lots of frolics going on.

The washing up is done on a table in my temporary kitchen, which is out back of the house. It is done in a bowl. There is no water out back, so the bowl has to be filled at the front of the house, in the sink there which has cold water and hot water from a little boiler. The bowl of hot sudsy water, which is quite heavy, I then carry down the hall, hopefully not tripping over the tarpaulins on the floor which I sometimes do even when not carrying anything, and so back round to the kitchen. I use a tray to put the washing up on so it can drain. I get splashed and dripped on and frequently end up with a soggy front of me including damp feet. But I manage. However, the washing up is never, ever, all finished. Normally the water in the bowl gets too mucky so the bowl has to be carried back along the hallway to the front door, where it gets thrown out much to the delight of the chickens who have taken it upon themselves to act as cleaners of the washing up water. They are very keen on this task. They always hurry to help.

The water for the loo is also got from the tap in the front of the house. We use a watering can for this. Yesterday we didn't have to. For two visits to the loo I flushed. Yes I did! I had one opportunity to use the little button, and one to use the big button. Wow!!!! Quelle magnifique!!! Four years without a 'proper' loo, starting off with porta potties, then graduating towards a sit on loo but with watering can. Gosh!!! Wow!!! Not only that, but I washed my hands in a sink. Yes, a proper sink!! In the bathroom!! Oh joyful did I feel as I gathered my choir music and headed out towards the car to go to a rehearsal. And joyful did I feel as I walked past the hay piled high in the Porch Gate waiting for me to make into mini DIY hay bales. And joyful did I feel when I got in to the car, knowing that there was nothing wrong with it, the garage man having said that there wasn't. So what was that loud cracking sound, followed by that frightening rattle. No one knows, but I am feeling joyful that we don't have to pay out a lot of money to get it fixed.

Lester, meanwhile, got on with finishing up for the day. And I am sorry that I was not there to help you when the male piglet escaped and you had to chase him round and round and round because he did not want to go back through the electric fence and I am sorry that I was not there to share your concern in case all of them made an escape because you had to switch off the electric fence to encourage that little rascal to go back through it and I am sorry that it made you all hot and bothered and that your ears got hurt by the din that all the piggies were making and I sorry that I forgot to put the pig food on to cook earlier on in the day because I was cleaning up the top of the cooker from the days of spills from the boiled over pig food pot which had accumulated into a thick wadge of blackness and I am sorry that I moaned at you for giving the pigs a hosing down to cool them off earlier on only the hosepipe from the new water tap at the back of the house was unfurling the rolls of hay I had, with much effort, just made (all eight of them) as you moved from pig paddock to pig paddock. And I am sorry for not sharing with you the new little pond for the geese, which they were being thoroughly joyful in, but which brought a furrow to your brow, for where there should not have been a mini pond there was.

And so I made a return.
"There's no water in the house at all" Hubs said, "I've had to switch it all off. There's a hole in the mains water pipe. I rang the plumber. He didn't say anything. I paid him today. Anyway, there's no water".
Not to worry. There is water in the big pond out by the Pig Paddocks so we can join up several electric leads together so that the pump Hubs has already taken down to the pond can pump water in to the pig wallows, and veggie plot. We have a well out front. I can take the extension lead from my sewing machine and connect it to the pump in the well and fill up some spare black dustbins with water from which the watering can for the loo can be filled as well as possible water for the sheep and pigs and geese and chickens.
All is well.
Can't wash, can't flush the loo, can't wash up, can't do the clothes washing.
But for one magic hour the bathroom was functional, although only with cold running water.....................and we even had a squirt of the shower.

Hopefully Veolia, the water company, will not take too long to mend the hole.
Hopefully Veolia, the water company, will not charge us.
Hopefully Lester's job will pick up. When one door closes and another door will always open, that is what I keep saying to him to keep his spirits up.
Hopefully it will not rain today until I get the hay bales in under cover.
Hopefully the chickens will resist the new urge they have formulated, which is to undo the mini hay bales I have made by scratching and pecking at the dried grass held within these fragile bundles.
Hopefully it will rain this evening so the plants can have a good watering.
Hopefully Hubs' back will not be so stiff this morning after having spent ages over the last few days scything the grass so we can make hay.

And hopefully we shall have water in the house sometime before next Christmas, and also, maybe, hot water as well, only the plumber men have now dismantled the pipes connecting the water to the front of the house cold water tap and the small hot water boiler. So no more going to and fro the hallway with a bowl of washing up water. Hot water will come from a temporary sink in the proper kitchen which is but an empty space at the moment. It will not be such a commute between there and the temporary kitchen. But there is no water in the house, so that is for the future.

But an idea has just popped into my head. In our caravan days I used to use water which the sun had heated up. Could use such a system again to keep the washing up done. Water from the well into a container. Let the sun heat it. Carry container into house, or take bowl to container, fill it, carry it back to the kitchen.

Hopefully Veolia will be here soon!