VLAD THE CLAD

Bumped. How dare you!

Whilst I appreciate builders can’t control the vagaries of the English weather or be expected to expose themselves to sunstroke in temperatures that make San Tropez feel a bit nippy, I was not best pleased to be told weeks ago that my job was being sidelined in favour of a more lucrative indoor project. But such is the reality of employing external trades. If a better paying offer comes along then expect your job to go to the back of the line.

After weeks of waiting, Vlad the Clad is back with his band of merry men to finish what they started months ago – cladding the exterior side wall of the house.

‘Really appreciate you letting us do that other woman’s job first’ said Vlad, disarming me with a cheeky chappy Jack-the-lad smile in a face browner and crinklier than a sultana. Hmmphh! Didn’t really have a choice in the matter, did I? Simple builder economics. Her £6,000 job trumped mine and provided shade so muggins here just had to suck it up.

But they’re here now, ladder and towers in tow, turning the front drive into a makeshift cladding workshop whilst I pop the kettle on for periodic refreshments. And yes, stereotypically they do drink their tea ‘builders’ – that is strong and sweet.

Just make yourselves at home

Is that singing I can hear? Sounds like they’re having way too much fun out there. Too many tenors, not enough cladding. You better hope I don’t find any defects or you’ll be singing a different tune when I fail to pay my bill in full.

Whole lotta nothing going on

It’s now 3 o’clock. Vlad and his crew have mysteriously vanished without so much as a goodbye. Probably seeking shelter from the sun’s rays so they don’t turn into a pile of ash. When I’ve established the coast is clear, I venture out to check on progress.

What the ….? Three of them spent an entire day faffing about outside, crooning to Shite Radio and all there is to show for their industriousness (or lack of) is a strip of metal trim and a couple of rows of cement fibre board nailed into place. Exactly what am I paying for here?

Metal ventilation trim

All in a day's work

Hours later, a text pings into my inbox. Guess who? Yep, job is being bumped yet again as now rain is on the forecast. Seriously?  Grrrr!!!!

BUTT MANIA CURED

Just look at these two beauties. 

They’re everything I could hope for in a water butt – strong, sleek, a pair of dark sentinels standing guard in the back border. Wow!

Cor blimey, they're huge!

Carping the diem this weekend starting with these stratas. No good having loads of water butts unless they’re connected up to the guttering so stop farting about as it’s time to get them into their new home.

There’s not a great deal of space to work in back here plus access is impeded by a few existing shrubs. Going to have to dig up the hibiscus first before we can do anything else. Amuse yourselves for a few minutes.

You'll never squeeze those into that jungle

Several sweaty minutes later… It’s all about the base. Butts need a nice stable spot on which to place the plastic stand they sit on. Somewhere they won’t rock about once full of water and where you can access the tap. Having levelled off the dirt at the back of the border, I’ve made a butt platform using some chunky old planks dumped behind the shed.

Make a nice level platform 

Pruners please. A bit of emergency bush surgery is needed to clear back the undergrowth as gap between fence and shrubbery is still not quite wide enough for my own lard arse let alone a large water butt. There! That’s done it. Now I can get the stands in place.

Stands fit perfectly

With both stands in situ, next step is to prepare the butts for linking. To connect three butts together, you need 2 connection kits. (£11 each at B&Q if you can’t wait for an online delivery). Each kit contains a length of hose plus a couple of adapters, washers and nuts. (I don’t mean us either!).

Water butt connecting kit

Using a hex shank drill bit or a router, make a couple of holes large enough for the adapters in the specially indented circles on each side of the water butt. Push the adapters with washers attached into each hole then tighten into position by winding the plastic nut onto the thread from inside the butt.

Circular indentations to drill adapter holes

Now the adapters are in, place butts onto stands making sure the sides with the adapters are facing each other and you can get to the tap. Lifting one of these beasties over the garden greenery is certainly not the easiest of jobs in a space smaller than the defence budget. Good job I've had my three shredded wheat.

Tricky to lift over greenery

Once you are happy with your butt position, push the hoses onto each adapter. We have lift off. We’re gonna do the butt conga. Oooh. aaahh. Seven hundred litres of rain capture capacity. Get in!

All linked up

All I need is love and rain. Lots and lots of the lovely wet stuff so I can corner the garden water market. Butt mania cured – for now.

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.