The school holidays started last Monday which means I have no work for two weeks and therefore on holiday also. This is my opportunity to get around to all those jobs I have been putting off for the last few weeks, mainly due to the flooding incident that removed all my motivation……….but as I mentioned earlier I think that has returned but not in spades.

We had rain last week and there was a puddle at the side of the house which sometimes appears when next door hoses their yard, which they had been doing so I did not pay too much attention to it. After three days it was still there. I checked the water meter and they wee hand was slowly rotating, this is not good. It turns out that as you may have guessed I had a burst pipe which I am to blame for.

Many moons ago, many years ago in fact I bought some fancy big plants for the garden and they were not cheap. As usual with my planting skills they died a slow death. I planted one near the garage door and dug a very large hole to accommodate it. I used the matic to break up the ground because the soil is more a kin to concrete here. I hit something solid which stopped my progress and I hit it several times before I realised it was the mains water pipe running into the house. Fuck!!!

I left the hole open for a while and waited for a fountain of water to rise from the depths but luckily that did not happen, I had somehow escaped disaster. Role on at least a decade, said pipe finally gave up the ghost; although I have my suspicions I have been losing water for sometime and it’s only now that it was sufficient to reach the surface. Glen the plumber came and fixed it, all good.

Same day I’m in and out of the garage and then I realise that the car seems to be kneeling down on the driver’s front. I have a puncture, fucking marvellous. I have had two punctures in 6 months after going for about 10 years with no problems at all. There was a screw sitting bang in the middle of the tread.

I change to the spare and headed off to the local tyre fitter. The spare looked almost brand new whereas the flat looked barely legal, I was hoping that they would ignore this and just fix the tyre but they didn’t.  I was told that they cannot repair a tyre that is older than six years old, which was news to me. I always buy four tyres when the need arises and to be honest I have been putting this off for some time as I was hoping to get through to the end of the year before having to change them but after seeing just how much wear was on them I got a new set of Yokohama’s. $560 for four balanced and fitted, which I may add is not too bad because I think I paid around the $500 mark for the same tyres the last time. The old Ford runs well on the Yokohama’s and they are a good tyre that gives you the confidence to push on even in the wet.

So that so far is what has happened in my world this week but it pales into insignificance when you watch the nightly news and you see what is taking place in Ukraine.

I’m reading this book,