One, two, three…aaaaaah!

Despite -5C first thing, I was up at Gemma’s by 10am ready to spend the rest of the morning gardening. 

Today’s task was to plant flaxes and beech and cabbage trees next to the farm buildings. As we were there, of course we needed to check on the calves. They are beautiful wee beings. This is an inquisitive Grey Murray calf who will be raised for beef. G had spent her early morning feeding them 3 litres each with rich milk. What a wonderful way to begin the day.

Because of the -5C overnight, I got home to find a perpendicular blast of water shooting across the drive from the pipe that feeds the tap by the garage. 

A few choice words were uttered.

The water supply to that tap is the main supply for all of the property, and by turning it off I had no water anywhere. So there was no option but to get stuck in more or less straightaway to fix it. 

That was much of the afternoon de-railed.

As a result of my continued focus on brother #3 in the UK I am having to reduce my expectations of what I can cope with. This was a perfect case in point. In normal circumstances I would have been able to get my head round what I needed to do as priority and what my options were to fix the pipe / tap properly. 

But after half an hour of looking at it, looking at other taps around the property, and looking at the Heath Robinson conglomeration of pipes and joints which were involved, I accepted that my brain is simply not agile enough to sort it today. 

See the extra. You may understand my difficulty!

So I dug a pipe-stopper out of my bits and pieces of water pipes box. Once it was stoppered I turned on the main water supply again, checked it was water-tight and walked away.

It can wait until another day. One when my brain is functioning more normally.

In the meantime my mind is back with my brother who is dying by a tiny amount each day.