He touched the Butt

That's for all you Nemo fans out there. Alternatively I was going to call this one My butt overfloweth.

Since we moved into our new house we have not had much success with our downpipes and water butt. This issue has featured heavily in my daily life over the last three months and you might have seen any one of our household, including Mr Pickle, inspecting the butt and various bits of water catching paraphernalia, including complicated tied up plastic shopping bag structures, buckets, tupperware, the list goes on.

I am sure that most of you are wondering why that would be such a big part of my existence. Quick answer, you can't flush the toilet without water butt water!

Our landlords changed the pipe work arrangement trying to get the water tank to fill, to no avail, and I carried on catching water in a paddling pool, etc (see previous list) and tipping it into the massive water tank by hand.

I had reached the point of obsession on the day that I found myself outside in the pouring rain emptying the full paddling pool into the tank so that it could fill again. While doing this, Mr Pickle was happily jumping up and down in the rapidly emptying paddling pool fully clothed!

I have watched the flow of water down the guttering (we have open topped drain pipes to prevent forest fires), during rain storms, over the last few months and decided that we needed to plug up one particular downpipe to encourage a greater flow to the tank filler. This post my have started to sound a bit dull but it is very important that everyone out there has the full picture of quite how obsessed about collecting rain I have become.

Anyway, having plugged the appropriate hole, you can imagine how excited I was to see a veritable flood of water gushing out of the gutter and into the downpipe. You would be forgiven for thinking the story ends there. No! But now I have sucked Jeremy into the obsession.

There was no water coming out of the pipe!

This piece of pipe, that had been resited and rearranged, was still the problem! We ran some tests involving Jeremy standing precariously on three stacked up dining chairs (we have no ladder here), me standing on just one under the pipe and a litre of water so we could measure output. Mum and dad, aren't you glad my scientific education hasn't been wasted!

As it turned out, all we really had to do was take the filter off the end of the pipe and shake out the dirt that had collected in it. On the day of testing it was gloriously sunny, as was the next two weeks. Never have I wanted to see rain more.

The rain arrived yesterday. Mr Pickle and I ran outside in great excitement and did a little victory dance on the patio because we could hear the water gushing into the butt. Mr Pickle had to go and touch the butt to feel the level of the water (it is opaque and you cannot see in). Such is the logic of a four year old.

We rang Jeremy, who is in the outback again, to give the glad tidings and I think he was more excited about tapping the butt to guess the level of water when he gets back than he is about seeing us!

We have had torrential rain for the last 36 hours and the water tank is now full and overflowing. Luckily, there is a fully working overflow system that hasn't seen a drop of water for a very long time.

Jeremy, you will not need to touch the butt when you get back! I have hung up my water obsession hat and have moved back to an old obsession of making friends out of socks.

I think I need to get out more. That could also have been a potential name for this post.

Ha ya

Mr Pickle and I went along to a karate club yesterday and joined in.

All was going swimmingly, Mr Pickle was being attentive and focused, he was staying put in his row and was following instructions. I was amazed!

Sensei then said the words 'and with ki ai on the reverse punch. Oh dear! One very sad and soggy small boy attached himself to my leg and got himself elbowed in the head for his trouble!

He didn't run away though, he got back into his row and carried on. Each time there was shouting he covered his ears and cried but he kept kicking air like his life depended on it.

We are going back again tomorrow so we shall see how he fares. I have told him that we have to go for two weeks before he can have his own gi, which for him is what it is all about!

I will be wearing my gi tomorrow and am wondering what the others will think of the embroidery on the back.