Category: Pipes

Avatar Water faff

Where is your water meter?

In this post, likely to be the first of many where I talk about things to do with my new house, because that’s what my life is like these days, we’re going on a journey of discovery to find the water meter.

The electricity meter is easy. That has a special meter hutch in the hallway, so you can see it as soon as you walk in the door.

The gas meter is also not too difficult. Look under the stairs, where the boiler lives, and there’s the gas meter, sheltering underneath it. Excellent.

The water meter? Last time I had to find one it lived on the outside of the building, mounted quite low on the wall. Must be around here somewhere. The water company tell me it’s electronic so it can be read by a water meter detecting robot passing within fifty metres or some such futuristic nonsense.

One place it definitely can’t be is underground, because I’ve checked all the manhole covers and other gratings and none of them are either watery or metery. One is a big inspection hatch for the drains. Another is a smaller inspection chamber where a drain turns a corner. Some are gratings into the drains. And the other is labelled SEW, presumably short for SEWER, and I’m damned if I’m going in there. It sounds gross. So that stuff is all drains.

Lucky for me, after making further inquiries it turns out SEW doesn’t stand for sewer, even though that is completely logical. No, SEW stands for South East Water. Underneath the SEW manhole cover is a foam block covered in mud, and under the foam block is four inches of freezing cold stagnant water, and under the four inches of freezing cold stagnant water is my electronic bluetooth enabled water meter.

Let’s hope it’s waterproof.

Avatar State of the Beans Address – 2020: The Write-Off

Friends. Now is a time of crisis and uncertainty, of complications and sullenness the likes of which have not been seen for half a century or possibly longer.

The Bovona Virus has a name. It also has a face. The face that it has does not have as many eyes as I do but they look upon all as a mess to clear up. Not one of those easy messes where you sort of sweep everything into your hands and throw it in the bin. I am talking one of those adolescent messes, a mix of beans and PVA glue, scattered all over your carpet, trodden into the fabric repeatedly and then somehow heated up into a solid, disgusting mass. Human beings are that mass. Bovona wants you and your family hiding in a bin or worse.

The good news is that there are people out there, much smarter people, who are desperately trying to find a cure to this madness. There is one somewhere and they will find it. Like a some cache of Cadbury’s Creme Eggs hidden under a nut bush, these men and woman, these scientists of the modern era, will sniff out these eggs and distribute them amongst the population. When we finally get our eggs there will be great rejoicing and celebration. I personally will be setting aside at least three weeks to sit in a tree and marvel at the outside world. I may have to grow feathers and adopt the mannerisms of an owl, possibly have myself adopted into an owl or owl-like family, in order to survive and I will do. We will all survive. Myself and my owls will ensure it.

So the question remains: what should we do with the rest of 2020? Should we give it a little more time, like the great one-eyed songstress Gabrielle, and hope that the Summer, Autumn and Winter months redeem it? Should we remain patient in the face of adversity? Or, as I would recommend, should we bin the rest of the year, go into suspended animation and all wake up in 2021 to start afresh? Given that all manner of festivals, gigs and other events have been postponed indefinitely until further notice we could have a slew of everything at the same time. We could gorge on tasty morsels of this and that. Perhaps the whole world should take a week off and indulge like chubby beavers trapped in an Oak Furniture Land, in a relentless barrage of hedonistic behaviour and uncompromising lust. How fruity.

I have spoken. We shall prevail.

We need three and, thank Bobby Costanzo, we are three.

Avatar Flexible workspace

We’re all on the lookout for a flexible workspace these days. Somewhere you can just sit down, maybe order a latte, open your laptop and, I don’t know, edit a podcast or grow a hipster beard or something.

The other day, while exploring an area I hadn’t visited before down in the sub-basement of the 1930s part of the building at work, I found an excellent flexible workspace and wanted to share my find with you. Here it is.

As you can see, it’s pleasingly raised above the general floor level, offering a sense of superiority and a view over all the people working nearby (or water heating machinery; I think it was mostly water heating machinery and sewage pipes you could see from here). It also has many useful features:

  • A light, so the workspace has excellent all-over lighting levels
  • A railing, so it’s very safe
  • A calming white/grey colour scheme
  • A red pipe

Obviously I’m claiming first dibs on this, and will be moving in there first thing Monday with my laptop to grow a podcast and edit my beard. But if you want to book a slot yourself, just get in touch.