Never rains but it pours...

For about five years, we've had problems with the shower at the Vicarage.


Unaccountably it somehow leaked water into the kitchen. If it hadn't kept bringing chunks of the ceiling down, it would have made an amusing saga, as Russell the plumber and Ian the diocesan surveyor struggled manfully to find the cause and stop the leak.
All sorts of things were removed and resealed. When finally it began to leak down into the new kitchen and threatened to do even more serious harm, Ian suggested a drastic solution. A sealed cabinet could replace the shower. This would stop the water once and for all !

In fact it is the drain which causes the real problem (see note 1).
Ian the surveyor hasn't yet seen the thing Russell has mostly installed, for he is away on holiday. I suspect even Russell is embarrassed by it. It is a sort of water cubicle, much smaller in area than the old shower and very difficult to enter and exit, for its doors are a sort of flappy plastic things which dig into you if you try to go in, and switch back to take a swipe at you when you leave. In size, it would just about suit small children; I'm the only one here thin enough to get in and out without suffering some kind of damage, and truth to tell I would not even think of putting sucha crummy device in my boat.

Still, the point of all this is just that I decided to write Ian a sonnet to the sad cubicle, to demonstrate my regret at the sorry wreck which is now our bathroom. It goes thus, (with apologies to Will)


Shall I compare thee to a shower tray?
Thou art more fragile and more flexible.
Young Stone, I know, installed thee in a day,
But plastic walls are all too breakable.
Sometimes too full thy predecessor brimmed
And oft into the kitchen overran.
And every shower from rust to rust is doomed,
By chance, or nature's ever fickle plan.
But thy new shiny walls shall never leak
Nor lose possession of those sparkling hues
Nor shall decay make thy frail sealings creak
When day by day thou bearest constant use.
So long as none of us can fit in thee,
So long shalt thou all fresh and dazzling be !

well a day!
maybe soon someone will get round to doing
last year's quinquennial repairs as well....




Note 1.

Though not visible from the ground, the pipe has no fall, and once outside the house via an odd route through damaged lead flashings, the pipe actually goes uphill for some distance!! Small wonder the shower has blocked and over flowed so often. Changing that will be the real answer.