Thursday 16 July 2009

watery


I was out doing stuff yesterday, and when I parked up outside the office I was visiting, I switched off the engine and heard a hissing from under the bonnet.

"Uh -oh..." I thought, pulling the bonnet release toggle.

Indeed, steam was hissing out from the little bit of tube that connects the water pump to the cylinder head.

Nothing to be done until it was cool, so I completed my business and then drove the very short distance to a branch of ALDI, where I bought loads of their sparkling spring water.

I poured a bottleful into the radiator and drove home. And removed the offending pipe. It has a split along the seam, as you can perhaps see here. And it's less than a year old.



So I replaced it with a thick piece of hose.

The positive side of this is that I've discovered that ALDI's spring water is at least as cheap as LIDL's, and it comes from Wales rather than Germany. So I'll be going back there.

Later, I sat on the top deck of the Grain Barge in the harbour, drinking cider with Brendagh and watching the Sea Cadets keeping warm with their rowing and shouting at each other. It's a shouty business, being military.

It was a bit chilly, as the sun sets in Hotwells in the middle of the afternoon, what with the great mass of Clifton looming over it. Me, I just put a coat on. But whatever floats your boat.




11 comments:

  1. Our neighbour did a similar thing to my old washing machine. I remember running out to buy superglue - and that wasn't the reason why I had to buy a new one in the end.

    I'm glad to find someone else who drinks sparkling water. What do you do with the empty bottles? Have you noticed that no one ever asks coke or fizzy drink users what they do with their empties?

    Is that Bristol in the top picture? - very colourful!

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  2. Is that sparkling as in light bounces off it in an interesting and beautiful way or carbonated full of bubbles? Did you want to give the inside of the engine a wee tickle?

    Funny how people pay a fortune for water no complaint? When asked for less for petrol it is the end of the world.

    Caroline x

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  3. I *love* the top picture! And a bit of shouting is good for you. So is a nice coat. And cider. Probably.

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  4. Mostly, the empty bottles go to the recycling bank, Anji, though I sometimes cut them up to make useful things with. I used to top-and-tail them to make protective tubes for seedlings too, when I had a garden. What do you do with them?

    There's something about carbonation that gives the water a slightly different flavour, apparently, Caroline. If I only had flat water, I wouldn't drink half as much, and I'd probably end up dehydrated. But supermarket water is much cheaper than the posh stuff. And I try to get local sourced stuff, to take into account water miles. The nearest source here is Glastonbury; a posh organic supermarket in Bristol was selling Fijian water, which struck me as being plain wrong in so many ways.

    Thank you, Nicky. The trouble with shouting, I find, is that it leaves me a little horse. And I already have a bicycle.

    Ta dah!

    I'd get my coat, but I'm already wearing it. Nice shoes!

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  5. Mine are taken to the recycling bin (used to make fleece pullovers or rubble for under the roads). Some I keep at home for when I have to collect samples of pee. The tops make good funnels. To water a plant or young tree slowly take the bottom off the bottle turn it upside down bury it next to a plant and fill with water. If you fill the empty bottles with tap water (so they don't fly around in the wind) and leave them in the garden, there is something in the plastic cats don't like. I tried this once but got the impression you need to renew the bottles often.

    Like you, I wouldn't drink enough water if it wasn't fizzy.

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  6. Bubbly water good for making kidney stones! Try them once and you redefine pain, said to be worse than being shot. I am now trying to visualise a double blind test to compare pain levels, where would you get the volunteers?

    Caroline x

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  7. What makes it do that, I wonder, Caroline? Calcium carbonate? -I wonder who was able to make the comparison with getting shot. They sound unlucky...

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  8. Dom has got kidney stones and she's the only one in the house that doesn't drink fizzy water. She bought a filter for drinking water, I can't help wondering if that has something to do with it - I haven't started my research yet...

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  9. Hot climate and dehydration can bring it on but that can't be what caused mine!

    Caroline x

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  10. I am hypersensitive because an avulsion to my urethra---a chunk was taken out by a motorboat 20 years ago in Peekskill Bay on the Hudson River--when healed left a permanent stricture. It doesn't take much calculus to make a painful blockage. Recently I have been studying the importance of an alkaline (or at least pH balanced) diet to prevent the leaching of calcium from the bones which creates those painful deposits called stones or gravel---in my case it doesn't take much to block the poassage.

    A water filter should help. Not having one (yet), I am adding drops of Alkalife (distilled water, Potassium hydroxide, Sodium hydroxide) to my tap water for drinking.

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  11. Lord, this is opening a can of worms. I' been entirely oblivious to any possible harm from carbonated water. Just been boning up on it (ha, er, ha) on interweb. Must do some changes around here.

    That accident sounded bloody awful, Larry. Did the boat's prop hit you while you were swimming?

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