Unexpected playtime with a drain cleaner + an unexpected loss of five teeth

Today we are going to try and achieve two gardening jobs, both maintenance, both pleasant enough – and regular income. We went to our first one at about 11 o’clock. The lady who we see, she must be 90 to a day, had not yet risen so we had to wait a little bit for her to get up. I decided to go walkaround the local streets and what do I see but a drain cleaning wagon.

I love these. I love seeing films and videos  of unblocking drains. So long as water is concerned I’m interested. I went up and had a talk to the operator. He invited me to have a go. Didn’t believe it at first. the equipment consists an aluminum pipe about 20 cm in diameter. Round the bottom there are a series water jet that blasts high-pressure water at the mud that tends to block the drain. It is counterbalanced so quite easy to swing down the drain. We had a lot of fun and a laugh and a joke and they allowed me to take pictures after my having used the cleaner, which was more difficult than I thought.

Back to the lady customer. There was very little work to do, there were few weeks so we said we would see her again in April or May. We went from Timsbury to our second job in Paulton. On our way we visited the Hub cafe and library. We arrived in the middle of someone preparing lunch. Tea and coffee was not readily available so we left after chatting with a couple of people. We saw this pumpkin on one of the tables.

it cheer me up to see an indication of someone’s 16th birthday, or what their 61st, in the car park behind the community centre.

On to our job. This is a small back garden that we took on three years ago which was in a complete mess. It took us a couple of hours to restore it to a beautiful state and it is now neat and tidy ready for the winter. Grass does not grow much below 10°C.

Back home to have lunch but before that I decided to jet wash my mower and my strimmer. After a drink, I started lunch and I was biting on a roll of bread when inside my mouth I heard a breaking sound. My top platelet of teeth had just broken off. I immediately called the dentist and declared an emergency and fortunately they were able to see me at 12:10 tomorrow Friday. I now have the problem of eating lunch but I adapted fairly quickly because I can bite with my molars to the left and to the right so I will not starve.

We had our ZOOM men’s meeting for the Froome area. A local retired doctor talked about his work as a Christian. He was asked whether he prayed with patients but said that the GMC were quite strict on that so his wings were  been clipped a bit and some of his colleagues were told off for praying with patients with probably the best motive but it was against the regulations.

Largely toothless, I had some soup this evening which was actually more than sufficient