The swimming pool has to go. When the daughters were at home and brought all their friends and the SP was younger, it was worth all the trouble and expense. And believe me, heated outdoor swimming pools are both, in spades. But it is 16 years old, various replacements and repairs to pump and cover have been estimated at 15K. It is rarely used now and it costs three and a half times the original figure to heat. Folly. You cannot simply drain a swimming pool and fill it in. (Ask an engineer.) So I have decided to turn it into a pool, as in aquatic plants and possibly fish. We already have the small lake and it gives such pleasure and brings in such wildlife that another watery space nearer the house would enhance things no end. But can I find out how to get this job done ? Can I find out how to do it - correction, WHO, to do it ? I have googled, don`t you worry, and found a man in the USA who DIYd with a tiny backyard swimming pool. But they do things differently there.
So, here is a Bank Holiday challenge for you. Find me a man, or men, or even women and children, who will come, estimate, give me a sensible quote, and turn my swimming pool into a wildlife pond. It cannot be impossible but they do have to know what they are doing. The Greek Gardener will take on any challenge but I have him busy sorting out the holes in the drive. Holes did I say ? Canyons more like. The drive is always in need of repair. The postmen calls the dip by the willow tree the Water Jump. Last year`s floods didn`t wet the house itself by a drop but they roared their whitewater way down in three channels, cutting deep grooves and scouring out pits in their wake. To have the lot tarmaced would cost so much money you`d have to lie down if I told you. To fill them with aggregate and stones works - for a time. But that`s all we can do. The firms who take on such work have enough post-flood to keep them busy till retirement and will not even come to estimate, so the Greek Gardener has organised the lorries full of stone and the hired digger and we await events.
Or, more likely, another Great Flood. I sometimes think I might as well fill in the holes with ten pound notes and cut out the middle man.
And while we are on the subject of last year`s floods..here is out Thought for the Day from Nigel Lawson`s book An Appeal to Reason.
'Natural disasters such as hurricanes, monsoons, droughts, earthquakes, tsunamis and even pandemics (the vogue word for what used to be known as plagues) have always occurred and no doubt always will; to attribute them to global warming is not science but political propaganda.'
