Science
states that the human body is up to 70% water.
Evolutionists
say that life as we know it crawled out of the ocean some 3-4 billion years
ago.
You only have
to watch what happens when particular humans are placed near a body of water to
see that it's true.
Take what
happened to us late last year.
I noticed our
front garden was looking a little lush, considering the lack of attention we
give it - first a bit of extra moisture, then a trickle, then a faster flow
into the carport beside.
It got to a
point that the men of the neighbourhood did as men do, stood around and
discussed the matter. After a suitable length of time, and appropriate number
of beers, the menfolk decided a natural spring had sprung up in the
midst of the front foliage.
And left it
at that.
Until the
local Water Board left a little card in the mailbox saying our water usage was
"higher than usual". Still my
Beloved thought it nothing of consequence, it was summertime after all and kids
being kids had been splashing about a bit in recent times.
When the
Water Board left a message on the phone that our bill was on its way and it was,
again, a little higher than usual, I felt a trickle of concern.
It turned
into a full blown flood the day the bill appeared- December 21. Whereas our
regular bill was around the $400 mark, this one came in at $4521.18 (was that
18 cents really necessary?) I mean to say: Four Thousand, Five Hundred Dollars!!
A "little higher"? Yes, like Lady Liberty is a little statue!
A discussion
with the Water Board had me trying to track down a plumber to come take a look.
Good luck with that, 4 days before Christmas. 45 minutes and countless phone
calls later I still had not found a tradie willing to come before the holidays;
the earliest any of them offered was the 4th of January! Forget the sugarplums, I had visions of
dollar bills running down the driveway. So back to the Water Board I go and beg
them to help me find someone suitable to assess the situation. Finally a
company agrees, for only $150 call
out, plus $90 an hour.
There go the kids' Christmas presents. I need a Secret Santa, stat!
There go the kids' Christmas presents. I need a Secret Santa, stat!
Anyhow,
plumber comes at the crack of dawn next day (pun fully intended, you know what
tradespeople are like) and there's me out in the garden in my pjs, with him
saying "You need someone with underground detection gear to find the
pipe and save a lot of digging". I make no assumptions on the intelligence of
the plumbing profession, but Einstein he ain't. So, why, I ask, did your
company not send someone with said gear? His advice was to get someone else to
do the dirty work, unless I was willing to pay two blokes the hourly rate
apiece. Yeah, no.
Armed with
shovels my Beloved and neighbouring blokes started shifting soil.
4 hours
later, 6 feet down and 8 feet along, they found where the water was coming
from.
But we seemed
to have misplaced our menfolk.
Instead we had
mud monsters of various shapes and sizes, three grown men had a total and
terrific transformation back to boyhood, they were having so much fun playing
in the mud.
Our actual children, on the other hand, stood well back from the
filth, in their gumboots.
The womenfolk were standing a little further back
again, armed with various cameras and
recording devices, capturing the moment for posterity...just in case one of the
aforementioned fellas did something that might win us the big bucks on those
Funniest Home Video Shows.
Sadly, while
there was a lot of laughter, cursing, and occasionally squealing from 'the pit'
(yes, squealing), there wasn't any footage worth submitting. Happily, they
found where the Water Board were making their money, and after more swearing
and squealing, they were able to clamp it off until the plumber could come
back - using a system that would have made MacGyver proud- a bit of wire, a rubber glove, some duct tape, and a plastic bag.
They caused
such a spectacle that the neighbours across the street had set up deckchairs
and were sitting, drinking, and cheering everytime the water got turned back on and
the men started their swearing and squealing again.
After much
mirth and way too much mud, the boys reckoned their rubber glove/duct
tape/clamp combination would do the job until the professionals came back (at
the crack of dawn the next day). Surprisingly, it did.
Now all we
had to do was unearth (literally) our spouses, by way of the garden hose on the
lawn- no way was that much mud coming inside our homes.
And after a
bit more begging, pleading, and form-filling for the Water Board, they accepted
our submission that the original water pipe had simply given way due to old age
(happens to us all), and they reduced the bill from 4-and-a-half grand, to a
mere 500-hundred-and-something. Plus the plumber's bill.
The kids got
their Christmas presents after all.
The neighbours got a new drinking game out of it.
And next time
the neighbourhood needs a bit of cheering up, we'll just add water.
Jx
©2012
