[The Old Groaner] Just another week

Now I was not going to climb up the mountain in the dark so I headed back to bed, determined to investigate in daylight.

At about 8 a.m., after a strong coffee, I climbed up over large boulders and through low prickly bushes and discovered that the one-ton tank had been knocked over on its concrete base and the pipe connecting it to the house supply had been torn away from the tank a little and was leaking. I had no option but to let it completely drain over the course of the next two hours after which I set the tank back up to further inspect the damage. The tear could possibly be repaired so I tied the ball valve up so that the top tank could be refilled without it draining into the damaged tank and started the pump to do that. All was well, and the repair could be undertaken later.

Monday. At 2:30 a.m. Rover woke me again, and I went through the same performance as the previous night. This time, however, I did so whilst standing in a small stream, so now I did climb up to investigate, and I discovered that the tank had been knocked over again but this time the pipe from the top tank was completely severed from the tank and was gushing water from both the top tank and from the mains feed. I turned all the stop valves to “off” and again returned to my bed and to Frau who, as the previous night, was sound asleep.

Now, here’s the thing. I had assumed on Monday that the boar had accidentally overturned the tank whilst fleeing the mad Englishman. However, I think the chances of them accidentally doing that on two consecutive nights are rather slim, and concluded that the thirst beasts had done it on purpose.

Tuesday. A full night’s sleep and an uneventful morning spoiled only by frequent blips in the electricity which each time turned off both the TV and the computer. Frau tends towards paranoia and thinks the guy doing it is watching her through binoculars and pulls his prank whenever she is near the end of a long e-mail. I think he’s watching my TV and does the dastardly deed whenever Anjali Rao comes on the screen. I don’t know about your TV set up, but it takes me about five minutes to get the picture restored by which time Anjali has been replaced by Richard Quest or the weather girl with the big nose.

Ah! Tuesday lunch time, a high hour of our week during the season. Tour buses galore converge on the village so we take our place in our favorite watering hole and criticize the dress, build and behavior of the visitors. I also exercise the bees in my bonnet as I listen to the licensed tour guides misinform the hapless tourists as to the history and geography of our fascinating village. Today I hear the earlier population of our village leap tenfold with two consecutive groups, only to be halved by the next, and I learned that our limestone fold mountains are in fact volcanic in origin. Frau calms me with more beers. Would that my bonnet’s bees catch “colony collapse disorder.”

Wednesday. Why do we do it? It was our annual “Let’s make pizzas” day for about a dozen children. Actually the pizza making was a little less messy than usual due, I think, to the presence of a particularly German parent who took it upon himself to supervise. Things soon deteriorated, though. Frau had laid on a roll of wallpaper and some finger paints. After a few masterpieces had been produced by the kids the first red nose appeared, that was soon followed by a green nose and before very long there was almost no pink skin to be seen and that included Die Frau and myself.

Thursday. After pizza for breakfast we drove to town to ask the post office to perform a trace on a registered mail which had failed to arrive at the home of Frau’s parents. We were told that it could not be traced once it had left Turkey!

Friday. Frau spent the entire morning telephoning around Germany, via Skype thank goodness, and eventually located the missing parcel. Frustrated by lack of access to the computer, I was driven to filing the contents of my “out” tray where I discovered half a dozen “urgent” documents. After a good long lunch break I mounted the computer whilst Die Frau banged around the house with her Rowenta noise machine.

Saturday. One of our two least favorite days of the week. Every weekend families from town drive out to picnic in and around our valley. Being town people they seem to be unaware of the possibility of there being animals such as cows, goats and chickens on the roads and drive like banshees. When it is time to leave they pack their lunch waste into plastic bags and, to keep the bins of the town clean, they drop the bags on the roadside, often outside our house.