Total nightmare day

Excuse the ungrammatical title of this post but it really does say it all. Today was one disaster after another, each one worse than the one before.

I went to bed pretty early (for me) last night in the caravan – 10.30pm – but was awoken at just before 5.00am by crashing thunder and rain hammering on the caravan roof. I tried to get back to sleep again but in the end gave up and made a dash for the house when the rain had eased off a bit at around 5.30am. It wasn’t then worth trying to get a bit more shut-eye on my sofa so I just got myself washed and shaved and had an early breakfast, thinking about my plans for the day.

Men were due to arrive at around 8.00am to dig up my garden in order to lay a new electrical cable to supply my house and I thought that after they’d got underway I’d be able to snatch time between the expected possible showers to start shipping suitable stuff in my trailer into storage. However, that idea was immediately dashed when the man in charge said that sorry, they’d have to dig up the whole entrance down to my house for the whole day and that if I didn’t move my cars, they’d be unable to get out.

So any thought of shifting stuff in to storage immediately went out of the window – yet another potential moving day lost. However, I thought that I’d be able to make the best of it by spending the day loading stuff into boxes, something that I could do indoors even if it was raining, but little did I know what was to follow.

To kick off with, I thought that it might be a good idea to clean my oven. It’s one of the items I’m leaving behind as the new buyer is taking quite a few things, which I’m happy about as it’ll save me having to (a) transport them and (b) pay for storage. I hadn’t realised just how bad it was and it took me the next two hours or so. So this was lucky really, as the job had to be done and it would have caught me out even more if I’d left it to the last minute.

Then before I got busy filling boxes, I thought that it’d be a good idea to make up my usual stock of salads. When I buy in the ingredients, I have always have enough for nine, so instead of making one at a time, which is tedious and inefficient, I make up a whole batch and keep them in the fridge, gradually working my way through them. This occupied me for the next hour or so, bringing me up to about lunch time. It was about then that I went out to see how the workmen were getting on and here are some shots of what I found.

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The entrance to my house had indeed been totally ripped up. They’d actually started at the bottom close to my garden and when I’d popped out earlier there was already a large trench there with a growing heap of soil and rock, mainly, beside it. They’d then extended the trench right back up to the road where there will be a control box and as well as already inserting a large red plastic tube in the trench that will contain the cables, they’d also begun extending the trench into my back garden.

When they’d arrived, I’d shown the man in charge where there were underground pipes to do with my ‘système d’assainissement’ that would need to be avoided. However, I’d totally forgotten about the mains water pipe that passes along the back of my house and then turns up at the corner where they intended to bring the new electric cable to the surface. It was just then, just after I’d taken a pee and the toilet cistern was refilling, that the house lost its water supply.

I went out to see what was going on and sure enough, the young digger driver had cut through the mains water pipe and the trench that he’d just dug was already filling up with water. Luckily he had the presence of mind to go and turn the supply off at the main stopcock before consulting his colleague as to what to do next. I then had a telephone conversation of about 20 minutes at the end of which I said that I was off to make some tea only to then realise that I couldn’t, because there wasn’t any water. However, I was then surprised to hear the sound of running water and when I turned my kitchen tap on, water came out as usual.

I went out to speak to the workmen and they did indeed confirm that all was back to normal. When I asked if they carried some kind of emergency kit in their van to deal with such emergencies they said that indeed they do as they cut through underground pipes the whole time and not only are they permitted to repair water supplies, they are an easy repair to do.

But not only did I find that they’d repaired the mains supply, they’d also decided that rather than waste time avoiding the underground pipe that enters my grease trap taking water from my kitchen and bathroom, it would also be quicker and easier for them to bust their trench right through it and reinstate it afterwards. Here’s how they did it.

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The man in charge said that it was quite lucky that they did, actually, as either due to faulty installation when it was put in or through ground settlement, the length of piping between the last bend and the entrance to the grease trap was lower than the entrance itself. As a result it presented a ‘trap’ which had filled up with muck and silt, which they’d cleaned out before reinstating the pipe. And when they make the system good, they’ll make sure that there’s a continuous fall into the grease trap.

But my problems didn’t stop there. The sound of running water that I’d heard in my bathroom wasn’t just the cistern filling up – it was the cistern overflowing, luckily just into the pan itself. I surmised that because I’d just flushed the toilet when the supply had been cut, it had presented the least resistance when the supply had resumed (like a tap being left open) and a piece of grit had flowed into the body of the water level valve in the cistern preventing it from closing. There was only one thing for it – I’d have to strip the valve out and try to clean it and then buy a new replacement if I was unsuccessful.

This took me the rest of the day, so nothing got moved into storage today and no boxes were filled. However, I did get the toilet working again, which was a relief in more ways than one. The workmen had also made good progress. My back garden was still in a state of total disarray (they said not to worry as they’ll be reinstating it properly) but they had at least opened up the entrance again so tomorrow I’ll be able to get my trailers out. They’d also put barriers around their open trenches at each end before knocking off work at the end of the day.

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I have to admit that the entrance to my house will probably end up being an improvement although they will most likely have inadvertently made it into the full 4 metre width for a ‘chemin rurale’ that it never was before. I noticed that their trench at the road end was beginning to slowly take in water and as I’d had a leak in the box that contains my water meter last bank holiday, that luckily I’d managed to repair, I nervously checked to see if it had returned. However, it was as dry as a bone and I also couldn’t see any water in my neighbour-at-the-back’s box, so I left it there.

Will I get any removal boxes filled tomorrow? Who knows. Will I manage to dodge any showers and get stuff moved out of my garden tool and wood stores into storage? I’ll have to wait and see. What I do know is that having been up since before the crack of dawn this morning, I should sleep like a log tonight. If nothing else goes wrong, that is…