The Name’s Pond…

Over the weekend I help a friend to put a pond in his garden. ‘Help’ is probably a strong word, as he had already dug the hole before I got there after stopping off to buy some more sand to cushion the bottom of it, and he’d filled a one-tonne bag in the process. We were left with the task of fitting the liner and filling it with about 250 litres of water. Fitting the liner was interesting; the only thing I can compare it to is fitting a duvet into a cover. Except the duvet is 16’ x 16’ and the cover is much, much smaller. Once you get the liner in the pond, it really needs some water in it to weigh it down and get it to fill into the corners. It also helps to hold the pleats in the corners tight. This is where we ran into the first snag.

He had bought a hose, top marks there, but the connector was too small to fit over the kitchen tap. The only option was to take the end of it up through the bathroom window – where it still wouldn’t fit. No problem, we’re smart chaps, I’m sure we can think of a way to overcome this trifling problem! Then there was what can only be described as quite literally a ‘Eureka!’ moment and an idea; fill the bath with water and siphon it down! Then we noticed the end of the hose in the garden, which was now about 20’ away from the pond…

Plan B then; let’s get some buckets and run a kind of relay, emptying one while another fills. With the hose precariously expertly fitted through the bathroom window, my cohort made sure the end of the hose was in the water and the bath wasn’t overflowing while I got on with trying to get the siphoning started. Unsurprisingly, it takes quite a bit of suckage to get water through a 30’ hose over two stories. I mean, this was harder than trying to suck one of those beastly thick-shakes through a straw, and anyone who’s found themselves drunk outside the Wimpy in Camborne (this is going back a few years, but yeah, Wimpy!) on a Friday night knows what I’m talking about. I found myself fighting the laws of physics as various pressures tried to suck my cheeks and lungs up the hose, but I’m nothing if not perseverant. After a little while I felt what should have been my first warning, as the sucking became less difficult and a slight rush of air came back down the hose. Me being me, I just thought it was the end of the hose coming out of the water, but no, a few seconds later and I was on my knees on the lawn trying to empty my lungs of water. What an embarrassing way to go that would have been: “Man Kills Self With Elaborate Drowning Device”. Once the flow started all was well, the bucket-chain system worked well, and some thirty buckets later we’d created a pond!

In celebration we got everyone around for an impromptu barbecue to make the most of the lovely weather. My BBQ sauce arsenal so far this year is consists of:

  • Jack Daniels Barbecue Sauce (Smoky)
  • Reggae Reggae Jerk/BBQ
  • Nando’s Peri-Peri Barbecue

I’ve started with the traditional favourites this year, but the Nando’s one is new to me. It’s absolutely gorgeous, spicy and smoky at the same time and lovely and thick. For now it’s going to have to do, at least until I have a kitchen and can start crafting my own again. Speaking of which, I got home yesterday to find the long-absent builders just leaving. It turns out the floor has set, passed the crush test, and as of today they’re going to start on the blockwork! This is momentous news to me as it means I should get home today to find some semblance of walls. Maybe I’m really going to have a home by summer. Maybe.

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