Once the puppies had done what was expected of them (and rudely woken Treacle) I made toast and watched an episode of "Another Life" in which an astronaut on humanity's first mission to the stars was acting like a truculent four-year-old. Sci-fi works if it has plausible characters... this show doesn't, really.
I set off to work. I'd rather not work on a Saturday, but there it is. The masses have stood on their doorsteps and clapped me, so I suppose it *is* what the public wants. As I drove the "Farming Today" show was on the radio. It doesn't take a genius to realise that grape vines loved the heat of the last week and that cows didn't. The presenters then listed pretty much everything grown in British farms and went into great detail as to whether the recent heatwave had been a good or bad thing for whatever it was being grown. After five minutes I tired of listening to the patently obvious and turned to "Ivor Biggun" songs instead.
As I drove home yesterday I went past ten miles of lorries queuing in the lorry park bit of "Operation Brock". This morning that had grown to twelve miles, with another ten-mile queue of lorries in the contraflow bit (the bit I am supposed to use to get home!) It turns out that the Rear Admiral had hoped to go across the channel last night. Living only a couple of miles from the channel tunnel terminal it had taken him six hours to drive to it during the night.
The cause? The French passport control people were blaming technical difficulties and Brexit. The British were blaming the fact that less than half of the French staff had turned up to work...
All I'll say is that my plans for tomorrow (my one day off) are now scrapped over something which was utterly predictable
I got on with work; as I worked I had a message from “er indoors TM” that the power to the fish pond had failed.
Having done my bit I crawled home down the A20. What would usually have been two lanes of traffic going down the motorway (albeit at fifty miles per hour these days) was one lane of traffic going at a snail’s pace.
I got home and had a look at the pond and soon found the problem. The cable to the ultra-violet lamp isn’t long enough. Some time ago I put a waterproof extension cable onto it. As I picked up the waterproof bit that connected the cables, so the water poured out of it. Just as well I’d turned the power off, wasn’t it? I took it all apart, dried it all out, and put it all back together with added waterproofing. Thirty seconds to type; a couple of hours to do. It has to be said that matters weren’t helped by Morgan piddling all over that which I was trying to re-wire. I know it’s a dog thing, but I wish he wouldn’t do that.
I got the thing working, but after a couple of hours the trip switch went again. I’ve isolated the problem to the UV light… I shall leave the filter running overnight to prove the rest is OK and worry about the UV later in the year when it actually does something.
And with less than two weeks to go until our holiday our plans for dog-sitting have gone west. If anyone can recommend somewhere that might be good for the puppies, or if anyone fancies taking them on for a week…
No comments:
Post a Comment