GrumbleSmiles

They say it never rains, but it pours.   In fact it hasn’t rained in Kilsby for quite some time.    The garden is particularly dry.     Whatever happened to April showers?

So it was a surprise to wake up this morning to find it was pouring down.    In fact it was Mo who first discovered it.   She was so excited, she came running upstairs to wake me up and tell me it was pouring down in the lounge.     Not the normal place for an April shower.

I lept out of bed and set off downstairs only to find the sunshine  streaming in through the open kitchen door and not a drop of rain to be seen.    Then I ventured into the lounge and discovered a spring bubbling out of the ceiling.    Actually more of a raging torrent !   Directly below the upstairs bathroom, so I raced back upstairs, but there was no sign of a running tap, or an overflowing sink nor a leaky pipe.    That exhausted my plumbing knowledge, so I rang our friend Chris, who is a proper plumber.   Obviously he would be up at 7 o’clock in the morning, just waiting for my call 😀

Chris told me to turn the mains water off at the stopcock.   It is most conveniently located at the very back of the lowest kitchen cupboard.     Where we keep all the odds and sods of cleaning materials, …. and polishes, …. and rubber gloves, …. and dog bowels …. and 57 cloths …. etc. … etc …etc.     All of which I  intended to sort out, but I had left it for a rainy day☹️
Eventually I got to the stopcock, only to find I needed a screwdriver to turn it off.   I know I have one in the cupboard in the downstairs toilet.   The cupboard that is full of toilet rolls …. and cleaning materials …. and air fresheners …. and Dettol ….and small flower vases.    Right at the very back is my tool box.   Now I can put a finger in the dam.   Only problem is that when I finally turn the stopcock off, the water keeps on running.

By this time Chris is on his way blue light flashing, hurtling towards this Noah’s Ark in Kilsby.    In the meantime I set off around the house turning on all the cold taps and flushing all the toilets.     It’s a good job we don’t have a water meter.    At last the torrent is reduced to a trickle, but still you don’t really want even a trickle coming from the ceiling of your lounge.     I suppose we could get an aquarium and make a feature of it.

Outside a white van screeched to a halt, Chris ran in dressed for the flood with galoshes over his pyjamas and a life raft.     By this time the monsoon had passed  and he wondered what all the fuss was about.   Then after a quick cup of tea to make up for no breakfast, he set about investigating the source of the leak.

Sadly, his starting point was to check the cold water tank .   It is located in the most inaccessible place in the house, behind an obstacle course of clutter at the back of my walk-in wardrobe.      So now starts another involuntary clear out beginning with my gardening clothes, which I carefully scatter on the floor in a pile each time I come in from the garden.   With that out of the way I move onto the shirts I never wear and shoes I had forgotten I had.   Oh and the shoe cleaning polish and brushes I only use for weddings and funerals.   Then we are onto Mo’s riding boots x 2 and my treasured Stetson hat.   Nearly there, just a few boxes of assorted bits and pieces.     At long last Chis can inspect the tank, but that’s not the problem ….. so I can put all that stuff back 🤠

It turned out to be a faulty WC cistern and a blocked overflow, which Chris fixed in a flash.   Now all I have to do is put everything back in the cupboards !

Still the morning was better than watching breakfast television weather forecast😀

I grew up in the gentle world of feet and inches.

Of gallons of petrol , pints of milk and even smaller bottles at playtime in school.

A time of tables …  times tables and blackboards and chalk.  And marks out of 10 !

Of pounds, shillings and pence …. that made sense.     And didn’t change.

Occasional post cards and letters in the post.  And maybe a heart-sinking telegram.

But no junk mail or Email …. and certainly no instagram.

The  news in newspapers on the doorstep at 7am.

Then later on TV at six o’clock on the BBC.   But not 24/ 7 rolling repeats.

How things have changed?

But curiously we still have miles to go  ?

In my playing rugby days there were just fifteen of us …. no substitutes.

No yellow cards for ten minutes on the touch line, when you were injured you went off and stayed off.

A referee with a whistle whose word was the law by what he saw.

No action replays, no video delays   ….. just get on with it.

This blog is the sequel to the post I wrote last month about my investigation into a dripping tap of wasted money that I have  been paying out for over 40 years !   (You can find it by clicking on February 2020 in the Archive —— just in case anyone reads this in the cloud in 40 years time and can’t speak to a wonderful Scottish lady called Ellen who assisted me in my search for the lost policy)

The story began in 1972 when I wanted to pay for a deposit on my first house,.    I had not got a house, but if you wanted to buy one at an auction you had to cough up 10% of the money straight away and pay the balance in 28 days.   As a poorly paid, still yet to qualify, long-haired architect in Nottingham I was seen as quite a risk by the bank manager when I asked him for the huge sum of £3000 !     I didn’t have a mask or a gun, but you would think I was holding up his West Bridgeford branch of the NatWest bank.    No alarm bells rang, but he sent me packing with an instruction to “ Get yourself £3000 of life insurance as security,  before I can lend you a penny !”     I must admit I had not intended to threaten the whole future of the banking industry with my reckless spending.    Who knows, I might have caused a run on the pound ?

So off I went to find a trusted friend, a stalwart of the insurance world.   Where else but in the club  house of  Old Nottinghamians Rugby Club.    People you could fall back on after a failed bank robbery😀     What better than a prop forward?    Although, John Ullyat was better at propping up the bar these days, when he wasn’t selling life insurance.

Now I’ve got it 💡   Thanks to that tight-fisted bank manager and my trusty prop forward friend that is how I finally secured my first house, with a £3,000 life insurance policy from Standard Life.    Phew!  That took a bit of remembering.

Forty seven years and 2345 payments of £2.68 pence  later the lovely lady from Standard Life tells me it is now worth  a vast fortune of £1,977 and 79 pence, if I wish to surrender it.    But, as a one-time attempted bank robber, I’m Butch Cassidy, or maybe The Sundance Kid and you’re not getting my money back.    I’m going to keep paying the £2.68 pence until I get my £3,000 life insurance or I’ll die doing it!

If my calculations are correct I should be robbing the bank or at least the Standard Life Insurance Company in just another 26 years ! 🤠