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.

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

BOOK LIBRARY - FENCE POSTS

Every day’s a school day in the world of DIY, why should today be any different?

Today folks, we are road-testing new landscaping skills after watching a few of those online teach-yourself-how-to-put-in-fence-posts videos. Dig a hole, stick a post in then add concrete. Sounds simple enough. Except as everyone knows, it never is!

Son has found a piece of prime real estate in his front garden on which to site the village’s new lending library. The book box is being bolted on to a couple of sturdy fence posts so that it just hovers above this brick wall.

Can we put it there?

Once you’ve worked out exactly where along the wall the library is to be positioned then dig a very large hole about a foot deep as close to the wall as you can get. Measure the distance between the bottom of your hole and the top of the wall to determine the height of the fence posts.

Dig some deep holes

Cut fence posts. We used 1 x 2.4 metre post that was 10 cms square cut in half. Nice and chunky. Even a big bad wolf is going to struggle to blow those buggers down.

Look no hands to hold posts

Stick post in the hole. To save having to hold the posts in situ whilst the concrete dries, the other half has used some gash bits of timber and long clamps to chock the two posts evenly away from the wall.

Quick drying concrete for posts

Pour powdered postcrete into the holes around each fence post making sure it’s nice and compact then just add water. Always follow the recipe instructions on the packet for the best chance of getting a good bake.

Add powdered postfix

Then pour on the water

Pub lunch anyone? Well, there’s no point spending hours watching the bloody things dry, is there?

ONLY A NUMBER

What a weekend! Still buzzing from rocking my socks off to the Vengaboys at Victorious. And I mean buzzing. Five days on, my ears are fizzing like a sherbet dib-dab. That’s what happens when you stand too close to those enormous speaker stacks. You’d think after all these gigs that I’d know better especially now the TV volume is beginning to slowly creep up. Nah!

All aboard the Vengabus

The venga bus is coming, it would be rude not to get on it. Even though I’m a few years off from getting a biddy bus pass, I haven’t forgotten how to rave on. 

Age is only a number. And by next weekend, my knee/hip/butt will be telling me it’s a nine out of ten on the Pain-O-Meter. 

Up then down. Up then down. We like to PARRRRTAAY!!!

Scissor Sisters were also great

Summer is now officially over. Thank **ck. It’s rained (yay!). Cooler temperatures are hopefully on the horizon. Goodbye heatwave, hello tsunami. Happiest when I’m wearing my cagoule and not feeling like a roast-in-the-bag chicken without one. Finally, I can open the lounge curtains to look out at … clouds. And dead plants. Gardening is back on the agenda.

But before I ditch festival fripperies for garden fork, I’m devoting 15 minutes of my day to numbers because life’s all about maths. (And spreadsheets).

160 – the number of days since I left work to embark on my retirement odyssey. It’s been brilliant! I’ve not missed the drudgery of it all one iota or been back to see old colleagues because when you’re retired every day feels like a weekend.

56 – days to The Budget on 28 October. Horrible Healey’s replaced Rachel from Accounts. Will we see any relief from the tax burden foist upon us over the past few years or is it more of the same to come?

14 – days to the Bank of England’s next meeting to discuss interest rates, the BOE’s last knees up before The Budget. Andy Pandy had better hope they don’t decide to raise the base rate in anticipation of an inflationary spike. If they do, it’ll be a case of what comes soonest - Christmas or a recession?

114 – and that leads on nicely to number of shopping days before the big C. That is if you have any money left because the previous two points are going to deflate your financial headroom quicker than that inflatable unicorn you bought for the beach.

4.6 – kilos. When Bertie joined our household some years ago, he was a proper fat cat weighing in at a massive 10.1 kilos. Thanks to a diet of expensive cat kibble, his weight has reduced in direct correlation to my bank balance. Honestly, although I love my eggy-fart moggy there are times when I think it would be cheaper to turn him into catsu curry. Bertie! Why are you looking at me with kitty daggers?

2.45 – hours to my next visit to the Joint Pain Programme. This is like AA for the arthritic. Recommended by my physio as an alternative to medical intervention because let’s face it, the health service is going the same way as dentistry. ‘Motion is lotion’ utters our ‘rehab’ specialist as she drills a class full of octogenarians through an exercise routine designed around tortoises. I’m the youngest there. My pulse rate rarely gets higher than that of a cucumber and if the motion is ‘lotion’ then my aching joints are in desperate need of some WD40.

1 - week since I heeded the message from the clergy inviting me to pay homage to the Papa at his screening of '2 Big to Rig', the movie premiere of Ghost's world tour gig filmed in Mexico.  Awesome!  Gutted I missed getting tickets to see his Infernal Holiness in the flesh - busy holidaying in Munich at the time but watching this film more than made up for it.  

Ghost movie - amazing!

361 – days to next year’s Victorious Festival. Yep, the tickets are already on sale although headline acts haven’t even been booked because these days, music festivals are just glorified piss-ups with takeaways. If you’re lucky, you may even get to hear some decent bands. Or the Vengaboys.

The venga bus is coming. Waa Haay! Up then down. Up then down. 

We like to parrrrttaayy!!

BOOK LIBRARY - DOOR ASSEMBLY

Is it or isn’t it going to rain? I’m praying for a biblical deluge that will make my butts over-floweth so let’s hope the good Lord is listening to me and not plugged into some podcast on how best to manage an apocalypse.

Meanwhile, several counties away … a painted book box means we can now carry on with the next phases of this project – assembling the door then installing the little lending library in son’s front garden.

The gateway to literary opportunity begins with small hinges. Using very small screws, fit hinges onto the door frame into the previously identified positions. Don’t do like me and fit them back to front. Divvy! Work out which way round they go first then screw into place. Do not fit door to main body of the box at this stage.

Fix small hinges to one side of door frame

Next - lay your hinged doorframe flat so that the part going inside the box is face up then grab your sheet of Perspex. Position the Perspex across the frame leaving a small margin between the edge of the sheet and the edge of the frame. Use a bradawl tool to mark each of the pre-drilled bracket holes onto the wooden frame.

Position perspex sheet on frame

Mark position of holes with bradawl

With holes pricked out, lift the Perspex and carefully peel away the protective film away from the corners towards the middle of the sheet until it is completely removed. Do this on both sides taking care not to scratch any of the exposed surfaces. Lay the clear Perspex back onto the frame taking care to line up all the pricked-out screw holes.

Fit brackets on top of perspex

Fit metal corner brackets using short screws. You are sandwiching the Perspex to the wooden frame so two key things to bear in mind:

1) Ensure your screws are short enough so they won’t go through to the other side of the wooden frame.

2) Don’t tighten your screws too much as it may crack the Perspex.

Once you have all 4 corner brackets in place, then add the 2 x T shaped brackets to secure the Perspex to the central door strut.  You can now remove the rest of the protective film if you have not already done so.

A word here about stuff that’s obvious but often gets overlooked by the enthusiasm of cracking on. The more observant of you might be wondering why the door has no knob? This is not a deliberate design queue but an oversight on our part. Yeah, we simply forgot to drill the hole through the frame and Perspex beforehand. Top tip – never forget your knob!

When everything (knobs included) has been secured to the wooden door frame, attach frame to the main body of the box. This is a two-person job as one has to hold the frame up whilst the other person attaches the hinges.

Here’s what it should look like once it’s attached to the main book box.

Door successfully attached