Dear Landlord,
Everything is fine. Really. The drought’s been over for a while now, and the floor of the reservoir doesn’t look like crackle–glaze any more, peeling up in layers. Sheep were grazing on the thin grass covering the bottom after two months of no rain. People were walking their dogs.
Which is why your drains were blocked. Sorry about that. Hope the AquaVan man didn’t charge too much. I opened one manhole by the summerhouse to find what looked like a large boulder in a desert. Absolutely no rain for two months, to help wash everything down, and one resident having showers and singleton washing up – well it was inevitable, really. The two manholes on the patio had to be jetted. The decontamination didn’t take too long after he left.
Anyway, Everything Is Fine. The bathroom taps, which broke early on, (the basin one without a handle and the bath one (a mashed washer) which wouldn’t turn off) have been replaced by those you thoughtfully left in the airing cupboard, nice and shiny in their boxes. The plumber was great. He did also have to extricate whole lengths of tubing from under the basin, because it was sort of welded together in one long pipe, but he replaced it and it all looks very smart. The downstairs shower was tending to flood, so I replaced the badly draining circle with a spud–peelings sink–catcher, which looks awful but works really well. And since the shower hose disintegrated, I replaced that with one slightly shorter which I happened to have handy, which won’t be so good if you’re hosing down muddy dogs, but it’ll do for now, won’t it.
The guttering by the front door really should be mended, but frankly it’s just too useful. When it rains, a bucket underneath is full in five minutes flat, so I water my houseplants with it. I say houseplants; I admit they’re trees really. The two avocados are on the stairs and landing (no room elsewhere) and the Big Hibiscus is in my bedroom. Don’t get much light from that window now. They do so love freshly oxygenated water straight from the sky. They’re not so keen on the tap water from the utility room Big Springwater Tank Full of Limestone Chippings – it’s so alkaline, as you know, right-off-the-scale alkaline (I tested it) that it turns the leaves yellow in no time. I tried mixing it with the spring’s waterfall/acid peat runoff, half and half, but dipping the bucket always takes my wrist off, so I try to avoid that.
The stone dragons you built are just lovely. They’re growing their moss coats beautifully, as you intended.You are actually the only other person I know who adores moss. Father dragon has a blanket of the dwarf bamboo which survived last winter, and baby dragon has a wealth of that little flowering succulent I don’t know the name of. Mother dragon doesn’t say much, but I think she’s looking after a family of mice, so she’s probably very busy.
The 20 foot waterfall did its nut after heavy rain the other day, thundering down and creating another stream apart from the stone wall culvert one. This new one went through the birch trees in a torrent to the bottom track, which it covered in 6” of water, a completely new sploshing area for welly–wearers. I mentioned something about ducks to my mother and she suggested I buy some. But I thought you’d have a stroke, what with the chickens. (Did I say chickens? There are no chickens. None at all. Don’t know what made me say that. No Chickens.)
And the roaring river – just mesmeric, making me wonderfully dizzy after a minute of staring. My insurance company knows about the river. I told them that with it running into a series of linked reservoirs, and National Grid having 33,000 volt lines running in channels along the ground the other side of the river, the house was unlikely to flood. Or blow up. THIS IS NOT HUBRIS, if anybody up there is taking notes. It’s common sense. But there’s always a first time, I hear you say. Well you never mentioned flooding to me, and you were here for 18 years, was it? And the entire house is built of engineering brick, impossible to shift and impossible to get a nail into. Did you not tell me about breaking three masonry drillbits just trying to hang the bathroom mirror? So I didn’t bother putting up any shelves in the end. My workshop things are all on freestanding B&Q towers linked by 15 ft long 12” pine boards. One workshop for each bedroom.
So I sleep at night, while the river roars and the waterfall tumbles.
Going to make tea for mother and coffee for me. Will send you more later.
Yours sincerely,
The faithful tenant.
0 comments:
Post a Comment