It's Hard Work Being Green

Sometimes I'm not sure if some of the energy being put into going green is misplaced.

Standing on the back of our pickup truck gives me an excellent view of the wide open fen landscapes, and early in the summery evenings a view of dedicated joggers doing the loop out of the village and back again. It's also where I have to stand to shovel the half tonne or so of manure out of the truck onto the compost heap. It's very tempting to call over to one of the passing runners and suggest that they could usefully keep fit by helping me dig rather than gasping their way round back to where they started. Certainly after a day of moving compost about, digging over vegetable beds and fighting the good fight against nettles I ache in a way that suggests there might be such a thing as too much exercise. Either that, or I'm unfit.

Our plot isn't that big, but it is hard work to keep on top of all the garden tasks. It puts into context just how much work can be involved in going green. I've read of a few people who've bought enough land to provide a significant portion of their annual food needs, or others who have bought woodland with the aim of being able to grow their own fuel for wood fires. Whilst it fills me with admiration, I can't help but feel that they are going to ache quite a lot. They're also going to be spending plenty of time outdoors when the weather isn't doing the current fresh faced limber up to summer heat.

There again, they'll probably be a lot fitter than I am.

Plumbing - Miserable Work

After over a year of irritation I finally got round to replacing the mixer tap in the caravan. I'm sure new washers would have drastically improved it, but it had got into the habit of turning itself on when off and off when turned on. Whichever would be the most inconvenient. Not only that, but the arm of the tap had become so stiff that moving it threatened to pull the sink from the kitchen surface. No doubt these problems could have been fixed with a complete disassembly and overhaul, but for a few pounds we could get a brand new tap from our local DIY store that had nice ceramic washers, quarter turn taps and a silky smooth arm. Even if it had worked perfectly, the old tap was a fiddly awkward thing so replacing it was an easy descision to take.

Except then I had to fit the damn thing. Half a day of crouching under kitchen tops, cutting my fingers on tortured copper, getting soaked, covered in grease and rushing to get to the main valve in time reminded me why I hate plumbing so much.

Electrics are fine. Plumbing... less so.

I don't mind wiring (though with the new regulations, it's not so much an option these days). Electrical work can be checked and is either right or wrong. At no point does the current in the wires attempt to force them apart. A simple physical inspection shows you if you've made a good job and then the connections are very unlikely to leak 'just a bit', or slowly get worse with time.

By way of contrast, you can connect up a tap and wait for a few minutes before the joint that you thought was soundly tightened goes bang and geysers water out of the cupboard that made it so hard to reach in the first place. At this point there's no convenient trip switch that switches off the water. Instead you have to do the hundred yard dash to the stopcock whilst the kitchen erupts into mayhem. Then after a bout of mopping up, it's time to make the connection again, wringing its neck with a couple of spanners hoping to find that magic point where it's tight enough but not so tight as to strip a thread or twist itself into collapse.

When we start on our house I'll happily run cables around. Might even plug a few things together if it can be inspected to pass regulations. The plumbing though - that'll be someone else's job.