Attack of the Crab Monsters

As I mentioned in my last post, our dripping tap was sorted. Except it didn’t end there water-wise. Oh no!

You’ll recall that at night, to prevent serious flooding from our incontinent tap, we’d turn off the stop cock in the kitchen. It was a venerable stop cock having been around for many years. It had not experienced the trauma of being turned on and off so many times in so few days. In fact as it recalls the last time its head had been so rudely turned was in the late 1990s when the kitchen was last kitted out.

The thing is all the turning on and off had gone to its head. The day after our plumber had fixed our tap, we discovered that our stop cock had been dripping all over the place. Her waters had been breached and we had a near flood on our hands. As the waters were lapping my chin I managed to text our plumber. Miraculously she received it and within half an hour was with us, wading through the Biblical waters, and shepherding the animals out of the Ark and on to dry land.

She saved the day. The water’s receded. A rainbow formed and the sun shone.

Which wasn’t the case the next day. Soggy, wet, damp, drippy Monday. It was like living underwater. Constant wetness. Clouds so low they scraped the pigeons off the roof.

I wasn’t well having tripped over in my slippers (old people and slippers- a death sentence) – and whanged my hand. It swelled up beautifully, so much so, it being my right hand, I had great difficulty holding my John Thomas. As you can imagine this turned peeing into an art form. Doing anything with my right hand was problematic – I will say no more.

Anyway, I wasn't well and was moping around the house. The skies were heavy with rain and I noticed water dripping out of one of the electric sockets in the kitchen. This had me slightly worried since as far as I knew water and electricity don’t mix and water streaming out of an electric socket wasn't normal.

The immediate thought was of a leaking roof. I dashed upstairs into the bathroom. I opened the window and leapt  onto the flat roof. The rain was unceasing. It was cascading off the roof, into the gutter and through the gap between my neighbours guttering and ours. Finding a small hole in the brickwork, the tenacious stream of water managed to course its way down the brick work of the party wall and emerge, ever so energetically out of one of our electric sockets.

I was able to reunite the two sets of guttering and using the opportunity of getting completely soaked, cleaned the gutters of the years of accumulated detritus. This fixed the problem.

I was greeted as the all conquering hero by an adoring wife and was invited Ttoput my feet up and rest my throbbing hand accompanied by a nice cup of tea and a sticky bun.

We do have quite a bit of water damage in the kitchen to sort out but that’s for another payday.

As today is August Bank Holiday Monday, the rain is draining out of heaven's water closet and I am regularly checking all the electrical sockets in the house. You can't be too careful.