Twenty Four Hours!

Monday morning: The men arrived to repair the pool. The weather forecast put the Island on Amber alert as a heat wave was sweeping in and temperatures of 40c in the shade were expected. And, the Drain expert company came to check the drains! ... and this was just the beginning!

A few weeks ago our swimming pool began to leak, enough to warrant attention, and so we organised for it to be repaired. We were told that it must be emptied on Sunday, ready for work to begin Monday. No problems! Well that is what we thought, what happened next .....

On the Saturday we noted that when we flushed the toilets or took a shower the water backed up and came back. Trying not to panic as it was the weekend, we made several checks our self and realised that things were more serious than we wanted to think about.

Monday - as planned, the pool men got to work, they sanded down the pool, a plume of cloud hovered over the garden, falling down onto everything inside and out! The temperature shot up to around 35c in the shade! And the Drain company told us the drains were blocked and worse the pipe appeared to be crushed - a snazzy camera confirmed this. We needed to start digging to find the pipe. By the end of Monday we had Kangooed part of our tiled entrance pathway (it is normal here to have tiled pathways - they do look nice!) Followed by busting out several centimetres of very stubborn concrete. Hooray we found the pipe. But that was just the beginning.

With little rain on the island, tree roots look for water from any source and it seemed at some point in the past our sewer pipe had a tiny fracture. The desperate for water tree roots were in there and hence the beginning of our problem.


Tuesday - we were told a trench of around three and half metres deep and a metre wide needed to be dug along a long length of the garden to expose the pipe. There are two large trees in that location - the source of the problem as they had wheedled their little noses into our sewer pipe and wolfed not only the water, but crushed the pipe. We now have to take out these trees - the roots are around six to eight inches in circumference and each of the trees has several of these beasties! "Help," we cried, but there was none. Those who we called were too busy and others did  not want to work in the high temperatures. So boldly going where only fools go, we started the big dig and root removal. The temperature yesterday in our corner of digging was 50c degrees. Today, it has not been much better We have calculated that in between our other commitments, sadly we have these! We should have the first trench open and ready for the drain expert to lay a new pipe early next week. Fingers crossed! When I say first, there is a chance we may have to dig up rooms in the villa too!

What a time to have to do all this work when we could not even fall into our pool to cool off. By the way, the pool should be ready next week. I bet the heat wave will have gone by then and hopefully the new sewer pipe laid too!

To add insult to injury, Barney our doggy was ill yesterday and I spent much of the day, in between everything else, cleaning up after him. At 2am this morning he had us both up as he was ill again. After cleaning up we had to bath him. This morning, he his perfectly fine, running around, woofing and being his usual self. Unlike us!


I will end now on a cheerful note, I had a lovely review for Sometime It Happens... from Amanda Rutter of Floor to Ceiling Books. What made this review a little special was that Amanda does not normally review Indie Published (Self Published) books. Sometimes It Happens... was her first into this area, she ended her review saying, "Altogether, I'm pleased that my first foray into self-published works was a success. I was entertained by the story of Doreen Wilkinson, and would recommend this as an easy read on a summer's afternoon."