Incompetent me, who can’t possibly do manual labour…

I’m pressure washing the patio. It might not seem like the most ideal way to spend a Tuesday afternoon, but it needs doing. There are many things that need doing. Including dealing with the fence. My aim for the summer is to not touch the fence. The fence is very long and making it respectable again is the sort of tedious job that mean gods might give to someone troublesome like Sisyphus to keep them out of trouble.

Anyway, returning to the patio. It is made of huge stone slabs that have gone green over time and need cleaning up. Incompetent me, who can’t possibly do manual labour, set the pressure washer up, despite the yellow beast being stored on a high shelf in the garage and being a little bit broken.

Now as we don’t have an outdoor tap, I had to use the one in the garage. Surprisingly I actually managed to find the key. I opened the window careful not to disturb the spiders. Through this I poked the hose pipe. One end was attached to the tap (there was a pot beneath it because it drips) and the other end was attached to the yellow beast.

At the other end of the house, in the kitchen, I put the plug in the electricity socket and told the Mother to stand guard as I ran from one end of the house to the other switching on the electricity and the water. She was instructed to shout if anything appeared to be acting in an outrageous manner. A bit of water pooled out of the beast which purred slightly, but nothing went bang.

I began work.

Forty or so minutes later, just as I was in the rhythm of things, the yellow beast stopped growling and refused to cooperate any longer.

I squeezed the trigger a few more times and nothing happened, so I put the water gun down and went over to see why the beast was upset. I switched it off and took a closer look. Interestingly, it had stopped pouring out water. For a foolish moment or two I just stared. And then it dawned on me that I was looking in the wrong place.

I raced to the garage, which involved going up a step, through two doors and down a few more steps. I leapt through the jungle of tools, wood, ladders and random pipes scattered on the floor.

There was a waterfall. The end had popped off the hose pipe, soaking everything. A river flowed through the garage adding more victims to the chaos, including the Tall Aunty’s bed (no she doesn’t live in our garage).

And so, with much regret, the yellow beast was caged for the day. I attended to the flood and put the Tall Aunties bed and a few other damp things outside in the sunshine. Everything done, I gave up with the cleaning efforts and sat down to write this blog post.

Then it started raining.

floodpressure washer