Patex plumbing triumph and other collected new year thoughts

A few months back we bought a second hand loo cistern/mini washbasin as you do - our downstairs loo doesn't have a way of plumbing an actual stand alone sink - which was a bargain at 30 euros rather than a new one at 175 euros. It sat in the hall for a month until our new found plumber turned up to install it, charging us a large amount for what seemed a short time of work - but then plumbing is always mysterious and astronomically expensive unless you can do it yourself, which we cannot . . . 

A few days later a puddle of water started forming under the cistern; I did the usual thing of putting a small plastic box under the leak and hoping it might miraculously stop being a leak, which of course it didn't. The plumber reappeared impressively fast, inspected it and then announced rather smugly that there was a small hole in the interior pipe which was sending a tiny jet of water up and out of the cistern, and then told me, even more smugly, when I 'd asked if it was reparable, that it was impossible - nothing would hold back the water, and that he would either have to find a spare part = stupid amount of money, or make something himself = even more scary amount of money. 

He left saying he would do some research, after which I looked at the tiny fountain and thought there must be some way of 'holding back the water' it wasn't exactly the Hoover Dam. Sellotape, no. Gaffer tape, no. Patex! weird product I bought to make little blobs on a smooth spiral shaped metal lamp to hold little bits of paper suspended by wire - another post - you blend it up then stick it to the prepared surface (no water etc) which I did, then when it had dried, made another band of it and wrapped around the patch and pipe.

A day later . . . no leak. I raise my fist to pump the air in triumph! a small triumph but actually a strange turning point and a good time to realise such things at the start of a new year. I was listening to a favourite Youtuber recently - Dr Kfast talking Indian/American psychotherapy dude, and he was talking about how the brain gets into patterns of 'Ah - this will happen again because these things have happened before, and it is the pattern'; a lot more eloquent of course but it made me think about preconceived thoughts of how things will go. Me and Mark plumbing = disaster, so therefore this will be a disaster, and the plumber said nothing will hold back the water, BUT, wait. Supposing it is a success? it might well be, and if it isn't I'll try again with more thought and bigger blob of Patex. 

                                                                               Dr K

So, onward with positivity, not the annoying motivational office/café loo poster variety, just a small confidence that whatever you are planning could have a chance of succeeding, a good chance, and that is to be welcomed into the brain as we move forward in 2026 with all its possibly menacing metaphorical ships on the horizon. Perhaps if we all think hard enough in this humbly confident manner certain ego-ed utter maniacal world 'leaders' might just spontaneously combust.

Happy 2026! 

                 Spot of new year sun in the back garden when everywhere in the area is around - 4

Displaced Christmas day

Moved onto Boxing Day, and why not? (see last post) Still the same location, sparkly tree, cake; same crispy, bright weather, nut roast - as is our family tradition - and, the great plus, family and friends that couldn't be with us on the actual day.

So we did all the usual things, making and eating food together, walking in the vines, opening presents, and later, the traditional watching of 'Champagne Charlie' wonderful ancient black and white Ealing comedy. 

Amongst the delightful and useful presents I received was a 'kid's' camera similar to the one I had noted my five year old nephew playing with on a recent UK trip. The chunk of (happily dark blue, not pink and flowery as his had been) is as simple to operate as our toaster and regurgitates, not Polaroid plastic rectangles but till receipt-type paper with strange slightly ghostly black and white images, ephemeral and fragile, similar to images viewed in a grandparents' ancient photo album. I shall start pasting the more memorable ones into scrapbooks - little sketches of life passing, the antithesis of one's out of control phone photo storage; hardly ever noticed and subject to image disappearance through phone loss/theft/internet collapse, etc . . .

Christmas day 2025

A quiet day as our friends had both caught a virus they wished not to pass on to us, and our son had got caught up in his girlfriend's huge family event which was going on far to long to escape from; so, Christmas celebrations postponed until tomorrow. But it was a calm and tranquil day starting with a surprise white landscape from our bedroom window, dog walk, our personal painting and composition projects, tree planting (presents from me to Mark, eucalyptus and a certain type of citrus that can withstand frost, and drinking glasses of local fizz from our lovely neighbours who own a wine domaine.

Dog, unimpressed by tree planting activity - 'it's freezing, and it's 'teatime'

Contemplation, stillness and beauty in a time of sensory overload

Nostalgia of the Southern Cross

Mark's lingering and hauntingly beautiful rendition of Peter Garland's piano composition.

Christmas plastic madness

This blog has had its fair share of yuletide rants, not about the event itself but the tide of consumerism that submerges any notion of what this festival is actually about.

Our two great recycling emporiums have been trawled for our re-gifted gifts along with various why-would-anyone-want-to-say-goodbye-to-this shetland jumpers/cashmere scarves etc from Vinted. Lovely foodstuffs such as local honey, handmade chocolates and olive oil from someone who has an olive grove in Portugal and brings up regular supplies will make up the other presents, and although I might buy a few oddities in NOZ (a whole other blog post) I'll avoid the bigger shops.

I had to go into Action (terrifying shop full of 95% non essential goods) to look for a loo brush ( I do draw the line on second hand very occasionally) and was transfixed by the festival of festive tat on offer, the most ridiculous of all: special celebration of the the birth of Jesus dog bed, and - this stuff signals the near ending of the human race if ever there was a sign - a hefty plastic pot containing yuletide white candy floss containing flecks of gold. I've seen many of these pots and each time it's a palm to head slapping duh astonishment moment - a one-use plastic pot containing spun sugar . . . what crazies thought of this, and why, money of course, and especially at this cash-it-in time of the year. Well, time to go and wrap some stuff up in old maps of France I found at Emmaus earlier.

Joyeuse Noël.

London wanderings, and our own personal greyhound

Starting with our own personal greyhound. Rather than awake the horrible memories of all of October, I'll just write a quick précis of how our placid and faithful greyhound's life suddenly nearly ended. On a usual walk nearby, a large Staffordshire/boxer? type mutt slipped from one of the nearby houses, streaked over, and proceeded to maul our dog, not letting go despite me and two other people (including the owner) punching and kicking it. (Someone told me later 'you have to go for the eyes' . . .) Eventually, our dog broke loose and streaked home where, luckily, Mark was in. The rest of the sorry tale was of much blood everywhere, a very weird drive to the vets where I was totally in shock, and following, three weeks of vet care - mostly in the vet hospital quite a drive away.

When Bali returned it was our turn to dress the wounds, which became a many times daily scary chore, and awful for dog and us. The bill is huge and we now wait for the owner's insurance cogs and wheels to grind impossibly slowly towards a payment. It gives one a small insight into what it must be like in countries where the health insurance system is mostly broken . . . 

                               Dog before attack, and she's beginning to look like herself again

So poor Mark was left with the last bit of dog-care while I slipped off to the UK on a pre-planned trip to see family, friends and, my home city of London. Amongst the many joys of the trip: spending tome with lovely folks, eating 'foreign food' - fish and chips; walking in the Peak District, observing the calm sea at Bournemouth one stunningly still and sunny day, exploring charity shops, and probably the most poignant moment of all - commissioning and receiving a poem about our dog from a 'poet for hire' on the Southbank. I'd noted the guy in woolly hat sitting at a small folding table on which was perched an old typewriter. The handwritten notice hanging from the table read 'poet for hire - pay what you like.'

I had approached jingling the change in my pocket and wondered if three quid was too ridiculous - seems like most of the UK runs on card only and I'd only got change to hand out coins to the increasingly large amount of street dwellers. The guy had gestured to the sign - 'As it says, pay whatever you like . . . what would you like a poem about?' I thought about the golden leaves of the surrounding silver birch trees, the way the grey-brown Thames just rolls on despite world chaos, or the fact that 80% of London appeared to be composed of heading-towards-landfill shops. 'Hm . . . dogs.'

'Any particular dog?'

'Our dog.' I described briefly the recent happenings and how our world had shrunk to mainly peering at a two inch square of possibly necrotic tissue and trying to deal with it as the vets had instructed. 

'I like greyhounds' he had said, and after a brief moment of fingers poised above the old keys, he typed at speed, stopping to reflect a couple of times, and then pulling the paper, with that satisfying scrriit sound that only comes with using vintage typewriters, from the machine and handing it to me. 

When I looked up from the paper the Thames view was hazy from my tears. What incredible skill to be able to sum up the soul of a dog, and so much, our dog. We chatted about London, and how we had preferred it in its grimy days, as he put it. Later I went back after finding some more cash as three quid did seem paltry for such a life-affirming piece of art.

The poet(s) WORD TRADE are available for hire. I have included a link here.

https://wordtrade.co.uk/pay-what-you-like

The poem

                                        A few snapshots from my London wanderings this time.

15 century greyhound at the National Gallery

                My one purchase: tea and mug from favourite shop - Martyns of Muswell Hill.

One of five people I saw reading a book during all my eight or so train journeys - and he had a dog

View from Monument tower - first visit and well worth the climb.

Euston road fire station, a wonderment of 30s (?) architecture

Writers' process

We all have different approaches. I know one writer who plasters their sitting room wall with an A4 timeline featuring every chapter from one to however many have been planned, and then proceeds to write out everything that is going to occur in each chapter. I'm sort of in awe of this system, but also, not. It's a bit like playing chess. I'm hopeless at the game, being able to plan a couple of moves in advance before wondering how bats decided to hang upside down to sleep, why the mould in Roquefort cheese tastes delicious and not vile as you'd imagine it would, or how electricity really does arrive in a light switch, etc. Give me a game of Pictionary or anything that involves spontaneous action including drawing and laughing a lot, I'm yer dame.

I'm 10,000 words into the new book and although I thought this time I'd really plan stuff out . . . nope, not happening. The main character has stayed fairly consistant to what I had imagined at the outset but the secondary personage has completely morphed into a different sort of psychology, and actually, I like the way it's going. I once read an interview with Stephen King about his writing process, and it was gratifying to realise that he works in a similar way - the minor role housekeeper in one of his novels becoming a lead player which he seemed incapable of changing, for example. 

It can be a bit frustrating when trying to imagine the whole universe of a book but then perhaps it's interesting to get distracted by details along the way, and draw subconsciously on the internal library of visual and audible memories one stores away. Inevitably in the second draft, small and major things change and by then the useful framework is set, allowing a feeling of a certain sort of safe place to play around in, knowing the bulk of the serious work is done, the scenes set and the characters corralled . . . mostly. 

A small section from my latest  novel, and the third in the Londonia series.

                                                                        Kalistre O

The lock is glitchy again. I faff with the key remembering how easy it was before when with a finger touch the door would glide open. This hastily added slab of wood sits uncomfortably within the frame which in turn looks bizarre rammed into the pale grey plastic walls of my allotted room. That was during the last rounds of lec-fails. 

A whistling wood-o had done the rounds of all the sliding doors on this level and had hacked them out, mad max style and replaced them with oddly elegant, dark wood doors. I’d asked him where they had come from. He’d winked: ‘Some old manor house cross the line – they’d all been liminated.’ ‘From what?’ I’d asked. ‘UI generated pox, folks say. Or coudabeen bandits.’

I cross the corridor, weaving between blank-faced pairs of serfs heading towards the assembly hall, and knock on Sassy’s door. She must have sensed me as it opens immediately and her large serene eyes are staring at me in as a doe might have in a wood, when there were such things. I don’t say anything for a few ticks. The deer image is so strong I can smell it.

‘Yos ‘magining again,’ she goads, ‘y, blondy dictichary.’

‘Dictionary.’ I say. ‘Can’t stop it. It’s just the way my mind is. . .don’t you?’

‘What?’

‘Think about stuff outside of here? Trees, clouds, birds . . .what wind would feel like.’

                                                      https://kateahardy.com/