Going With the Flow

I have an endless array of house and garden projects all of them in a state of semi-completion. My kitchen doesn’t have much in the way of cupboards, so I have pots, towels, sacks of potatoes, hanging from walls and ceilings. One cupboard is old and pretty, but unusable, as it is filled with electrical wires and switches which were put in sometime just prior to WWII when electricity came to the house. The other I use as a food pantry. I store my dishware and glassware in an alcove above the sink that has three wide shelves but no doors to hide the crockery from public analysis.

For a couple of years, I have had the material laying around to make curtains for that unattractive alcove. But whenever I thought that the time was right to begin the cutting and sewing, I always had more pressing matters, like walking the sheep or running to the bakery for my morning carbohydrate fix. However, when I arrived here this May, I started sewing the curtains by hand and finished them in short order. I went to the hardware store, bought some rings and rod brackets, and let them sit around unopened for a couple of weeks. Finally, last night, Preston and I took turns whittling a branch for a curtain rod. I ironed the curtains, attached the rings and ribbons, and was very excited to hang them up and see the project completed.

The hanging of the curtains required that I clean away cobwebs that I have been ignoring ever since we bought the place back in 2001 and which I think the previous owner ignored since 1914 when the house was first built. If you remember an earlier post, I mentioned that it is not advisable to move throw rugs left by the previous owner, wadded up rags stuffed in pipes, or to peel off old wallpaper because there is always some worse horror awaiting you. I guess the same warning needs to be applied to cobwebs. In my house, they appear to be the mortar holding the place together.

About ten last night, after drilling four holes in the plaster and stone wall to attach the brackets, and wiping cobwebs off the walls and the exposed water pipes that traverse the wall, I triumphantly hung the curtains. I congratulated myself on mastering the faux French country look espoused by Pierre Deux. (The vrai French country look is to forego the curtains and just let the cobwebs drape your windows, a method I employ on all the other windows in the house.)

As I stood there admiring my artistic genius, I heard the dripping of water, a rather heavy dripping. Since the light above my sink hasn’t worked since the day after I arrived this May, and the kitchen was illuminated by a single dim bulb nestled under a dark metal lampshade hanging over the kitchen table, it took me a while to locate, with the aid of a flashlight, the source of the drip which was coming from one of the pipes running near the ceiling. A pipe that I had wiped free of cobwebs.

I went to the key rack that holds in the neighborhood of a hundred skeleton keys, a different one for each door on the property, grabbed several that looked like they might open a workroom where the tools are kept, and went outside, running a gauntlet of supplicating and in the case of one couple, fornicating cats. I grabbed three wrenches and returned to the house, kicking cats out of my way. The wrenches were the wrong size. I walked back to the workroom, walking through a gauntlet of now angry cats, and grabbed three larger wrenches and returned to the house loudly shouting ALLEZ! at the circling cats. Again, the wrenches didn't fit. I returned to the workroom, grabbed three larger wrenches, walked back to the house through cats that seemed to be hissing and baring their teeth at me, escaping with my life behind a slammed door. Thankfully, one of these wrenches fit. If it didn't, I would have had to grab a gun to make the run through the throng of cats now swarming outside the door.

Naturally, my first choice in wrench direction was incorrect as the water spurted out dousing my hair and head. I turned in the other direction, and this stemmed the profuse tide I had engendered, but now the flow was greater than the original dripping. I spotted two red valves on some nearby pipes and turned them. This increased the flow of water which was now running all over the shelves, dishes and glasses and splattering the wooden floor. Those valves were shut-off valves, but they shut the water off to the sink faucet, forcing more water pressure to build up in the offending pipe resulting in stronger jets of spurting water.

My very helpful friend Pierre-Yves, who would come down at 2 in the morning to help me if I called him, is in Paris, and since he’s dealing with some serious health problems this week, I decided I wouldn’t bother him at 10:30 at night. I needed to get the number of his favorite plumber, a man whose work and charges I had no quarrel with when he replaced the water heater that broke two weeks ago, but whose name I hadn’t bothered to write down.

I called the Tomlin’s and Pamela answered the phone. I asked if she knew the name of Pierre-Yves’ plumber and she said that she didn’t know the names of any plumbers because her husband Norman satisfied all their plumbing needs and she would put Norman on the phone if she could drag him away from the telly where he was engrossed in the world cup finals of soccer. I waited with dread for Norman to get on the phone. Demanding a European man come to the telephone during a world cup soccer finals match is probably a successful legal defense for murder over here. I was right to be apprehensive. The normally talkative and hyper-friendly Norman could be heard grumbling in the background and took a long time to get to the telephone. I think I heard Pamela forcing him to get up and go to the phone.

He told me he didn’t know what to tell me. Did I know where the valve was to shut the water off to the house? No, I didn’t. “Oh, well that’s a sorry state. I just don’t know what to tell you then.” I thanked him and said I had to go; I needed to try and locate a plumber. I am certain that if the soccer match wasn’t on, Norman would have volunteered to come down and help me. However, soccer games turn sweet men into werewolves over here.

I opened up the phonebook and dialed the numbers of several plumbers, as the water ran down the wall and over the shelves creating what might have been a pleasant calming fountain to some people who were very Zen and able to go with the flow. But for me the flow was instilling panic. Preston's electric guitar practice wasn't helping calm my nerves either.

None of the plumbers had emergency numbers. They just had answering machines which informed me that they would open at nine in the morning. Preston wandered in from playing his electric guitar in the back of the house, and decided he’d inspect the situation. After a pounding session of 20 decibels of amplified music playing, he was of calm mind. He traced the pipes and discovered what turned out to be the water shut-off valve for the house, hidden under a small table in the kitchen.

That stopped the water leaking out of the pipe. He also attempted to tighten the nut on the pipe, and was able to reduce the leak to a small, yet steady drip when we turned the water back on. So, we still had to turn the water off for the night. By the time we brushed our teeth with bubbly Pellegrino (This is unpleasant. Only resort to this in an emergency), and went to bed, it was midnight.

I don't know why, since no one here is at work at 8am, but I called Prayssac’s lesbian plumber. I remembered her sweetly painted sign in front of her aetelier across from the pizza place. To my surprise, she answered the phone. She quizzed me, and I gathered from the tone of her voice that she wasn’t very happy that I have iron pipes. It seemed to me that she would prefer plastic or copper piping. However, she will be out here sometime this afternoon if she understood the directions I gave her in French.

Thank goodness I was able to move the sheep out of the outhouse. It's coming in handy this morning.

Housekeeping Tip: Make sure to call in a structural engineer for an analysis before removing cobwebs from your walls, windows and pipes.