All Over Bar the Flooding
Coming to you live on Thursday morning, here’s how last night panned out. I waited in at the house, and the workman called just after four armed with a bag of tools and a string of complicated technical questions in Greek which received the occasional nod from me. Having finally learned the world for water pump after 16 years, I was able to explain that it wasn’t working, but that didn’t matter, he said. We wouldn’t need it until the sterna was fixed next year. He found the water feed pipe he needed, and I left him to get on with whatever he had to do.
An hour and a half later, after some clanking and shuffling about on the roof, he called me, and we tested the water by turning on the tap in the laundry sink. No water. A bit of head scratching, testing of other taps and back he went to figure things out. A little later, he was back, and we tried the kitchen, giving the open tap some time to run while the water filtered through the pipes… and worked. We tried the hot, and that worked too. Mild merriment. Only mild because there’s not a lot of pressure, and he explained (and better, I understood) that without a pump the pressure was down to gravity. I’d expected this.
I wondered how he’d filled the new tank, and he explained that he had, with permission, syphoned some water from the landlord’s sterna which is attached to our mains in-pipe, so both are filled from the same meter (we split the bill when it comes in). He also demonstrated that when our tank is full it overflows and the excess pours off into the courtyard, so that’s going to be easy to detect on water days. All done, he tidied up and vanished into the night leaving me to pack up and head to the boys’ house for the night to meet them and Neil for dinner. Progress was halted when I realised that the overflow was still overflowing. Some basic investigation showed me that the plumber hadn’t trend off the landlord’s feed, so the tank was still filling. I turned that off, not wanting to call him back as it was now dark. I was just leaving when I heard water still running and realised we’d not turned off that tap in the laundry. Not an issue, I thought as I headed to do just that, only to find the plug was in and the sink full. Not a problem, normally, except I learnt that the overflow overflows into the cupboard beneath and the laundry was fast flooding…
I dealt with that under the disinterested gaze of Thomas, the unwanted ginger tom who lives in the laundry basket, threw some towels down to deal with the mop-up the next day and headed up for dinner. So, finally, we have water back in the house though not flowing as powerfully as before. I am about to try out the shower for the first time, and I will leave you to digest this privateering tale and show you an image from the courtyard steps to give you an indication of how the guys are doing with the new paving for the lane to Lemonitisa.
