Tuesday 20 July 2010

Luck confusion

We bought a water butt a while ago, and my beloved, who's usually very good at DIY, got it all sorted. There was just one small problem and that was that as a temporary measure (well that's his story) he put it on an old wooden barrel that had been used for plants. It was working just fine, until I got home on Sunday night and was watering the plants with water from the butt, when I noticed that the downpipe that feeds water into the butt was coming away from the wall. When I really looked realised that the wooden barrel was rotting and the butt, full of water, was on the point of tipping over and dragging the downpipe, the guttering et al along with it.

As another temporary measure I opened the tap and let all the water out, so when I got up yesterday at least the butt was empty and I could move it. No sooner did I try to do that when the downpipe came crashing down and after spending half an hour getting the barrel out and tried, unsuccessfully to get the downpipe into a stable position, I gave up. All this in the pouring rain of course.

We are really lucky to have very nice next door neighbours, who also just as luck would have it, have a son who's a roofer. Norman (the neighbour) took one look at the problem and phoned for pipe assistance from the expert. I had to make a dash to Edinburgh to pick up Nell the dog who had been residing with No. 2 son while my beloved was away and I was working, and when I got home there was Kevin the Roofer, his pal and his Dad, job done and dusted, pipes all beautifully secured to the wall, and the water butt resplendent standing on bricks that Norman just had spare in his garage waiting for the right moment to make an appearance.

Now it all looks great, pipes all safe, water butt secure, and as an added bonus the bricks actually match the harling on the wall.

By my reckoning I think that makes it 5 in the luck stakes: 1. nice neighbours; 2. they have a son who's a roofer; 3. they had some bricks to put the butt on; 4. the pipes were fixed; and 5. the bricks matched the wall;

So as these things come in 3's, I have one more bit of luck to come.

Unless of course you count the fact that it all looks great, and then there's the fact that the butt didn't fall over, oh yes and then that the gutters didn't come down, and also that Kevin the roofer could come over pretty much straight away. I think the last counts as several pieces of luck, so now I'm just plain confused as to how much luck I've got left.

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