Well, it’s been a lovely Christmas. I was looking forward to a Happy New Year when I had a bit of bad luck! A plumbing incident!

Mysterious signs of damp on the kitchen ceiling from no visible source in the bathroom above. It got significantly worse, as they do, and a call to a plumber established that…. it was difficult to identify the source without putting a ‘keyhole sized’ hole in the now rather damp kitchen ceiling!

After I had signed a disclaimer, the ‘small’ hole suddenly became much bigger with a rush of water from above. A ‘snap tight’ joint in a plastic pipe in the ceiling void had apparently ‘snapped loose’ and caused all the problems!

So we’re ‘seeing the New Year in’ through a hole in the ceiling – but at least there’s no waterfall now!

It struck me that we have a load of proverbs and sayings about water – such as:

a drop in the ocean, a fish out of water, wet behind the ears, raining cats and dogs, water under the bridge, lead a horse to water etc. etc.

Obviously water is essential to life, and this is reflected in our use of water to describe human situations.
I recall Jack Nicholson’s wonderful statement to his psychiatrist in the 1997 film ‘As Good As It Gets’
‘Here am I drowning, and you’re describing water to me!’

Well, I’ve stopped drowning – now we just need to get the hole plastered up!

Happy New Year!