BUTT MANIA

Since the heatwave I’ve been dreaming of butts. Large butts, small butts, perfectly formed butts, space saver butts. Cute builder butts. Okay, not those but essentially dreaming of any kind of large receptacle in which to capture rain water. I’d even go as far as calling it an obsession.

Dry weather has naturally pushed up the price of butts because now everyone’s realised how bad the effects of a prolonged droughty summer were on all things green then demand for rainwater tanks, butts, buckets or anything else designed to hold lots of the wet stuff is now greater than ever. Even the grandson’s paddling pool has been conscripted for rain capture.

Lots of rain captured in one of these

I already have 2 water butts plus an oversized water collecting tank in the garden but this barely touched the sides during the summer scorcher. Be prepared is my motto. It’s not for nothing that I have a Domesday cupboard just in case the four horsemen of the apocalypse unexpectedly drop in for tea.

A quick consultation with Dr Google on my butt fixation. Diagnosis – expensive. For £130 there’s a magnificent 350 litre beauty called a Harcostar Magnum. Wow! What a whopper but perhaps a bit too large for the space I have in mind. There are more budget friendly options out there such as a 227 litre Harcostar (£70) or a smaller 210 litre cheapo butt (£59) available from Amazon.

Harcostar Magnum - nice butt!

Of course, the big question is how much do I really want to spend to cure butt mania? Naturally, my answer is I want the biggest capacity for the least capital outlay. The butt that appears to meet these requirements is a Strata 250 litre water butt. Spacious, reasonably priced and not so monstrously sized that it can’t be squeezed in somewhere. Rather than being short and squat, it’s tall and slim.

Strata 250 litres - come to mama

I have a perfect little ‘butt hole’ in the back border where I hope to conceal a couple of these Stratas behind a few manicured shrubs. The plan is to link the two new butts to the existing one which is connected to the shed guttering. It never ceases to amaze me just how much water can be collected from a shed roof during a downpour.

The perfect 'butt hole' at the back of the garden

It’s not for nothing that we work in a builder’s merchants – staff discount. Handy little perk when it comes to DIY shopping as I can now really push the butt boat out without needing to sign over my soul to Satan.

I’ve packed the other half off with an envelope stuffed full of tenners and strict instructions not to return home empty handed. Basically – it’s butts or else!

CARE IN THE COMMUNITY

‘Quick! I’m bleeding to death’ I shout at the Ancient Mariner as between the pair of us we grapple with the intricacies of learning how to execute finger prick testing on my poor befuddled diabetic mother.

This crash course in DIY medicine is the result of the NHS’s drive to push care out to the community resulting from the GP surgery deciding to withdraw mum’s daily insulin injection. Going forward, the expectation of the health service is that WE will all be actively responsible for managing our own care hence self-administration of treatments.

In the 12 months that mum’s been taking insulin, it seems her blood sugar levels have now gone south and are considered too low.

‘We have to balance the risk of falls to the risk of blindness’ chirped the Diabetic Nurse with a crocodile smile on her face designed to disarm even the grumpiest or more cynical of patients.  Okay, so our choices are a potential bump on the head or a guide dog?  I sat there poker-faced wondering if this was all part of health service cost cutting and making a mental note to consult the crap out of Dr Google as soon as we got home.

With no daily injections to administer, services such as finger prick testing previously provided by the District Nursing Team are also being withdrawn as it’s the NHS’s belief that so long as there is another person with 2 arms/2 legs living in the property with the patient then it’s down to them to take on the burden of carrying out any treatment. Carer’s age or capability to do so being totally ignored by the system.

Finger prick testing – well how hard can it be? I’ve seen the nurses do it. Just like using a small stapler on your finger tip. Squeeze out a drop of the red stuff then use the hand-held gizmo to suck it up in order to obtain a blood sugar level reading. Piece of piss. Yeah, I’m sure my DIY skills are perfectly transferrable for this type of task.

Except that it’s not quite that simple, is it? Nothing ever is. For starters, the Ancient Mariner has huge sausage-like fingers, the bedside manner of a serial killer and is 91 years old so you can hardly expect him to do this on a daily basis. Add to the mix that I hate needles or the sight of blood and between us we’re a nurse that’s more Hannibal Lecter than Florence Nightingale.

I volunteered a digit to experiment on. Nurses use small plastic clicky things called Unistik 3 comfort lancets to prick fingers. These lilac-coloured lancets are about an inch and a half long with a white plastic tab at one end. I studied the instructions on the side of the box. Twist white tab, remove it then press end to the finger and click. Easy. Nothing to it. Like frying an egg.

Unistik 3 comfort lancet

Four destroyed lancets later, the end of my finger still intact. Not a single drop of blood spilt. Time to call upon the services of Dr YouTube. And of course, there is a movie showing you exactly how to use these gadgets because what the instructions had failed to mention for the benefit of village idiots like myself is which end contained the needle. Ah, it was hiding under the white tab all along. Duh!

Next, pump up the Nexus blood sugar testing machine. A small hand-held monitor that talks to you. Not programmed to tell you what a cack-handed numpty you’re being but designed to verbally guide you through the process. Perfect for visually impaired patients/nurses but not deaf ones like father.

Nexus Voice Blood Sugar Testing Machine

Take a testing strip about an inch long then stick it into the slot. Great, it’s got arrows on the end you stick into the machine. Less chance of getting that wrong.

Test strips to hoover up blood sample

Prick finger then squeeze out a decent sized blob of blood. Do this before turning on the machine as it then minimises the risk of errors with the readings.

Turn on the machine, listen to the opening intro then when it tells you, poke the end of the testing strip into the droplet of blood. Ooooh, look. It magically hoovers up a miniscule sample of the stuff to test and within seconds, the screen displays your blood sugar levels reading them out too. Marvellous!

Now to repeat this process on mother who has been watching our antics for the past half hour with a look of apprehensive dread. After a democratic vote, it’s decided that I will wield the stapler and the Ancient Mariner the blood hoover. Teamwork makes the dream work.

We pounce upon mother before she has the chance to gather her wits about her. Yay! We’ve done it. The patient survived. We have blood sugar readings. 8.8 not bad. Pat on the back.

Care in the Community – getting clueless numpties to execute tasks that were previously done by the health service on other poor numpties.

Be prepared because under the NHS's new 10 Year Health Plan in the years to come, you too will be expected to become your own district nurse.

REPLACEMENT ASBESTOS SOIL STACK

If I had a tenner for every inch of asbestos used in the construction of this house, I’d be a darned sight richer than I will be after this project’s finished.

Ugh! Asbestos. It’s the bane of everyone’s DIY life. Can’t drill it, scrape it, cut it, sand it or do anything to it other than look at it. If the sort you have is ultra-toxic then apply for a second mortgage if you want to replace it with anything safer. You’re stuck with this bugger for life.

The exterior soil stack pipe was flagged on our survey as being made of the dreaded ‘A’, the norm in properties built around the late fifties/early sixties. Houses in those days were built from materials designed to last decades. Nobody gave the slightest thought to the potential impact of degrading asbestos on the health of house-owners until now.

Our soil stack pipe whilst in sound condition looks awful. Paint peeling like leprosy exposing patches of grey material most likely asbestos cement. In an ideal world, I would have scraped off the patchy black stuff then re-painted the pipe in either Hammerite or some other waterproof exterior pipe paint but no can do. To attempt such a thing might result in a fate worse than death.

BEFORE - Awful pipe

So, do I let sleeping asbestos dogs lie or do I find someone who can replace the soil stack in the safest way possible? But without it costing me an arm and a leg…

Our builder assures me his plumber is up for the job and can replace the pipe taking all safety or waste disposal considerations into account. Okay. I smile hesitantly before retreating indoors, shutting every window so that no A-dust can get inside and kill me. OMG the lad’s not even wearing a face-mask!!!

Old soil stack removed

One aspect of replacing a soil stack pipe that is perhaps not immediately obvious to plebs like me is that the task involves connecting the new plastic waste pipe to the back of your toilet.

New pipe has to connect to loo

Sounds simple enough but when your loo is of the back-to-wall type incorporated into a fitted unit then be prepared to have your toilet trashed in order to accomplish this because a plumber/builder will need to reach the back of the pan.

OMG!  My beautiful toilet unit

Horror of horrors – just look at our loo! I really hope they know how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Good job I’ve got a downstairs cloakroom or I might have to spend the day in the Spoons nursing one of those bottomless coffees in case I need a pee. Aside from the occasional sneaky peak, I’m keeping well out of it.

After what seems like hours of banging, crashing and scurrying upstairs, I’m summoned to inspect their handiwork. Phew! The toilet immaculately assembled. If I hadn’t snuck upstairs earlier, I would be none the wiser.

You'd never know they'd been here

As the upper part of the wall is yet to be cladded then only the bottom half of the soil stack has been replaced with a nice sturdy plastic pipe.

New pipes to be connected together

Waste water pipes from handbasin and shower temporarily plumbed in with new pipes which will eventually be joined into the main soil stack rather than run as separate pipes as had been the case previously.

So far so good. Only the cladding remains to be done.  Let's hope I don't have to wait too long for that part of this project to be completed.

Replacement soil stack to be continued

BOOK LIBRARY GOES LIVE

What do you give a 31 year-old for his birthday? A Bluey cake, of course!

Bluey says Happy Birthday

Come on - you don’t really think I spend all day every day priming, painting or putting up fence posts, do you? I’m a dab hand in the old baking department too. But cookery is a subject for another day because there’s a little lending library to be finally put to bed.

Those fence posts are as solid as a rock, the perfect base for our book box so it’s just a case of securing one to the other.

Place book box on top of both fence posts. Whilst one of you holds everything in place, outline each of the posts in pencil on the underside of the box.

Drawing round posts

Remove box and lay it flat on its back. Mark lines diagonally from corner to corner on your pencilled post outline until you have a cross in a square. Use the lines on your cross to determine the location of screw holes. Drill holes straight through from the underside taking care not to splinter the wood. You can use one very large screw in the middle of the cross or a couple of diagonal ones like we’ve done.

Drill holes from underside of box

Place box back onto the fence posts. Again, it’s a two-person job as one of you needs to hold everything whilst the other one screws the box down onto each post. That is going nowhere. Even a force 5 gale isn’t going to knock it down.

Screwed down onto fence posts

Stand back to admire. Wow! It’s turned out so much better than I expected. My son’s as pleased as punch and can’t wait to declare the lending library officially open on the village Facebook site.

Wow!  Looks great

I hope his little act of kindness will be well appreciated by the locals and encourage a love of reading.

Lending library officially open