Plumbing the depths.....

.....of the void space under Pippin's bath, to be precise.

I cycled off this morning for a merry day's Hole-Making at the Hole-Making Shop.

Now the first part of the apprenticeship is nearly complete, I am being taught Very Advanced Hole-Making. This involves twenty times the paperwork and gives me a headache. I'd like to say I'm enjoying it, but I'm not.

Pure And Applied Hole Making was a stretch, but this is silly.

Never mind.

Anyway, while I was attempting, (and mostly failing) to increase my skill-set, my darling wife has, seemingly without effort, added yet another impressive string to her bow.

Yes, while I was at work, Jackie completely re-plumbed the bathroom!

(It's worth pointing out here, that being a WB, Pippin does actually have a full size bath, though I mention it only to underscore Jackie's level of achievement, not to brag, you understand.....And not everyone even likes wide-beams, but each to their own, eh?)

It all began yesterday when she got back from a visit to London around lunchtime, and decided, as you do, to dismantle and clean all the waste water pipes in the bathroom. This wasn't quite finished by this morning, so I had a stand-up wash and shave in the kitchen. I was very careful not to complain about this as not only would it have been churlish in the extreme, it would also have been very discouraging. And potentially life-shortening.....

I got back at about 9.15 this evening, having spent the day narrowly avoiding several major Quality Incidents, with spots before my eyes where I had over-focussed on self-adhesive bar-code labels, to find the whole bathroom waste-pipe system replaced with correct, large-bore piping, new fittings, chamfered joints and brand new seals throughout, the bath half-full of water to allow the new (and very spiffy) sealant to set correctly, oh, and the Gulper Whale pump relocated to facilitate the eventual fitting of the fabled Vacuflush 5000 loo for good measure.

Too clever by half, my missus? I think not!

However, I am now going to crawl under the duvet, curl up and feel inadequate for a while.