Well, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, “Every day’s a school day”. On this occasion our ‘life’ lesson concerned plumbing. Not my favourite subject but here goes.

Having had a burst pipe in February of last year, when we had this years recent cold snap, one of my greatest fears was of a repeat performance. Needless to say the central heating stayed on 24/7, but I was still worried.

As things began to thaw, (which is the time to really worry) I was in the boiler house filling my bird feeder, when I heard the unmistakable sound of dripping water coming from behind my (new) washing machine.

Quite a slow drip, but a drip nevertheless. I can’t move the washer on my own and by the time Peter got up, the drip had speeded up. Sure enough the copper pipe at the back of the machine was leaking.

What conclusion would you draw from this sequence of events?

We thought we had another burst pipe, only a small one in comparison to last time, but a burst pipe nevertheless. It was easy to turn off the cold water supply to the washing machine, so apart from the fact I couldn’t do any washing, things weren’t too bad.

We really didn’t want to get a plumber after the fiasco of last time, so we searched the Internet and found some tape that was supposed to mend leaking pipes.

It duly arrived and so one afternoon we set about trying to sort out the problem, after all, washing your ‘smalls’ in the sink looses it’s charm after a couple of weeks. We had both been poorly, so hadn’t been able to do it sooner.

After closer inspection it became clear that we didn’t have a burst pipe at all. In fact the water was dripping out of the plastic nut thing that joined the pipe to the washer. It was bone dry when we installed the machine, but had obviously worked loose since.

So there we are another ‘school day’.