Water woes

Stuff and bother! I started an entry last week and put it in drafts, and now I can't find it. Oh well.

I carefully turned on the taps this morning, it's Saturday, and low and behold we had water! Hurray!!! Let me explain. Water has caused us problems almost every weekend for weeks now. When Mom and Daddy were here the water went off on a Fri night. Eric checked the bore and it was pumping continuously indicating a leak somewhere. Ian (neighbour who owns the bore) and Eric checked all the paddocks (the water leaves the bore then goes round all our, and their, paddocks to the troughs before coming to our house) by torchlight, and could find nothing. They decided some of the old piping buried under Ian's paddocks must be leaking so closed off the pump overnight. (Bottled water to drink and clean teeth by and buckets of pool water to flush loos.) In the morning Eric bought 250m of alkathene piping and fitted a bypass to allow water to come from the pump to the house directly. When they turned the pump on we STILL had no water. Eric then checked the paddocks again and found that in one of the paddocks he thought Ian had checked the water was hosing out. One of the horses had kicked a joint and it had separated!!!! It just needed re-connecting. Luckily, the piping bypass was a job that was on the 'to do' list anyway but I could have done without being waterless for 18 hours, and all the accompanying stress.

The following Friday Eric came home from work and noticed the pump was smoking. The pump had come off it's mount and worn the belts. Eric replaced the belts and did a temporary job on the mounting to tide us over the w/e., with the intention of getting it professionally welded on Monday. Little did he know that Ian and Claire planned to top up their 35,000 litre tank over that same w/e (it is normally filled with rain water but we've has no rain), giving the system a severe hammering. The pump moved again, belts ripped and we woke up on Sat morning to no water AGAIN! Another 6 hours waterless as they replaced the belts and got a friend to weld pump to mounting.

The following w/e the hot water heating element went and we had no hot water. Luckily it was cold enough to light the fire, which also heats the water via the wetback. THEN, last w/e, on Good Friday, we lost water AGAIN. This time we had to get the bore engineers out and they lifted the pipe (all 120' of it) to find that there was a tiny hole in the pipe and it was sucking water. They did a repair to tide us over the w/e and we wait for them to do a proper repair (should have been this week!). So you can see why I tuned on taps with trepidation this morning! Oh the joys of rural living! This particular episode was extra stressful as we were awaiting friends from Auckland and I had visions of being waterless with visitors for 4 days!

News from the Tanner household? Well Carol and Bloo return today after their (her) 2 weeks of kiwi roaming. Bloo met up with her as he is also kiwi (well world actually) roaming. Bloo is another ex-dukkie (Eric's old school). Carol returns to the UK on 21 April having failed to engage any kiwi passsport holder in marriage to secure her permanent residency status. I joke! She is obviously looking forward to seeing friends and family but I think it will be with great saddness that she departs this beautiful country. Having just done the Coromandel and Bay of Islands leaving is going to be even harder methinks. We will all be very sad to see her go, she has become an integral part of our lives and through her blog we have seen Cedar Lodge through the eyes of another. Although we always knew we had it pretty good here it is nice to hear the comments of others that usually reinforce that. Life is not a bunch of roses (as the water tale demonstrates), we have the tedium of daily routines, the struggles of Eric's attempts to get qualified, endless exams and all the frustrations that go with that, Harriette's hormones to cope with (and mine!) and money, or lask of it, intermittently causing problems. But... we do it all in a beautiful setting with a secure family life and good health, which is more than lots of other people can say. I sit hear in bed with the girls next door bopping around to Stan's Party tape (how many of you remember that tape? Thunderbirds, Rocky Horror, Blues Brothers and Dehlila (spelling?)), which is blaring out, and Eric in the loo doing something that is a cross between singing along to the tape and a goons impression. Life can't be that bad!

As for us all, on both sides of the globe, the kids are on holiday. The girls are booked in for a day of golf and another of netball next week. Alice has Ashley staying for as long as she wants. Ashley used to go to Hinuera School but her parents moved to Ngatea (about an hour away) to work on another farm. Childcare during the hols is not a problem with me home working as I just organise any visits I need to do for the afternoons when Eric is at home. Except I have arranged a meeting at the local prison for 11am on Monday! Oh well I can drop the girls off at the pool and let them have a mornings swimming.

Well I guess I ought to get up. The Stan tape has finished and Eric is out feeding animals (we have had to start feeding silage to the cows as the grass has stopped growing - no rain). I have a cottage to clean up as I have not been in there since Beth, Graham and Luke left after last w/e, and shopping to do if people want to eat this coming week!

I do wonder if anyone reads this but then I guess it doesn't matter as it's more a diary for us. But let me know if you do. I'd especially like to know if anyone comes across this who does not know us. And I must ask Stan to put 'comments' and a 'contact us' on here if there isn't one already. Can you Stan?