Skip to main content

A bar of soap, apple jelly and an oily ooze

My phone didn't need a video screen, I could see her lips tighten and pucker as she sucked the air through her teeth, "Oooh! It can go from a small crack to a hole big enough to fit your fist in. In just a few hours!"

In other words don't delay. In other words - words like hurry and leaking and oil and no-longer-guaranteed and cost and weekend-rates and call-out-fees and estimates and emergency - this will be expensive.

I tried a few words of my own - "I'll get back to you" and "Phone around for other quotes" and "Goodbye."

The second quote secured the deal - "We'll come tomorrow." Goodbye the gloom and doom merchants and hello to Mr Calmly-assess-the-situation-before-reassuring-the-client-that-all-will-be-well.  Why turn an ooze into an emergency? Why panic? Why guarantee that the client will suffer insomnia worrying that the ooze will increase to a gush and flood the garden with £900 of domestic heating oil? Why indeed - when all it takes is a bar of soap? Yep! A ... bar...of ... soap!

Yes, I did think that I had somehow jumped from speaking to Mr Calmly-the-sensible-oil-man into another conversation with someone who sounded very like Mr Calmly but was clearly having some sort of mind storm. A ... bar ... of ... soap.

"Has anyone told you about soap?" he asked. "Do you have any soap in your house?"

"Um ..." Can we get back to my oil tank; my oozing oil tank; the one that might rupture at any moment, I thought. "Ye-e-es, we have soap," I replied, thinking what does he expect me to do with the soap? Wash my hands! Ok, so there might be a little oil ... on one finger ... but this is taking the calm-the-customer-down approach into an insane realm of overly excessive slightly creepy attentiveness. Next he'll tell me to sit down and have a cup of tea, brewed on the aga ... the heat source that I have just had to turn off owing to the LEAKING oil tank!

But he didn't. The soap was to rub "vigorously" into the split in the tank wall. Immediate emulsification plugged the gap and slowed the ooze. Clever Mr Calmly.

So when your oil is all oozy and the cost makes you woozy there's no need to be boozy just rub in some soap. And when they ask you for a bucket of hot soapy water the next day, nod sagely. And try not to look too surprised when they use it to wash their hands!

A bar of soap ... and an oily ooze. Why insert apple jelly into the title? Apple scented soap? No. This is the reason



This the 7.30am apple picking, tree hacking, don't-want-to-risk-the-tank-replacement-men-having-to-do-this-and-making-the-job-more-expensive slog that got me up bright and early on a Saturday morning


And this the result



And this - "Where have all my apples gone?"




And ultimately this







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn&#
Post a Comment
Read more

My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful.  Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten!
Post a Comment
Read more

Curlews, summer skies and walking in circles.

Summer skies over the Yorkshire Dales and my mind is set to rest mode. But that rest is not totally restful; there is a niggle ... a memory, a hint of childhood, something that unsettles slightly - a light brush stroke of discomfort; a gossamer breath of discombobulation and a 'Woah! Wait a moment!' moment of 'that's-not-right!' - we're about as far from the sea as it is possible to be in middle Britain and yet, I can hear the distinctive Peep! Peep! of oystercatchers and the piercing cry of curlew. Here -  in the blue skies of the North Yorkshire dales and along the footpaths - and above the endless miles of drystone walls are birds that should be at the coast.  Oystercatchers, with their distinctive red pliers attached to their heads feed on - you've guessed it - oyster beds. All along the coastline of the British Isles, their distinctive cry is the call of summer. Drowned out somewhat by the banter of seagulls but sharp and
Post a Comment
Read more