Saturday, May 22, 2010
Brain power
It being a nice balmy evening yesterday we thought we would stroll down to the Italian restaurant which has been installed in what used to be the King William IV, a place we last visited to our entire satisfaction 29 December last (http://www.enzoatkingwilliamiv.co.uk/). Doing a reasonable evening trade, mainly mature and sensible people like ourselves. I started with cold baked vegetables which does not sound to hot but was fine. Thin slices of courgette, aubergine, mushroom and tomato, dosed with olive oil. Went onto to something called gnocchi which I have never come across before but which tempted me because the menu item included the words potato dumpling. They turned out to be white, the size and shape of a small plum and came with a tomato sauce and some melted cheese. Simple and satisfying. Although perhaps not so simple to make without a bit of practise. Finished off with an average tiramisu. The whole geed up with some Peroni beer, some Sicilian wine the name of which I forget and two sorts of liqueur. Excellent meal.
But by the time we got home, brain must have more or less been in neutral. After about half an hour of padding around doing nothing much, decided that I needed to put my indoor spectacles on. Searched upstairs and downstairs, high and low for the things but I could only find the case containing my sunshine spectacles. Eventually found the other case on a bookcase, containing my outdoor spectacles, my already having my indoor spectacles on. Which I had certainly not worn to the restaurant. So I had completely forgotten that I had changed spectacles on arrival. Never mind that I had thought that I needed to change them when I already had.
So today, needed to rebuild confidence with a suitable challenge. So we decided to go for flat pack hose reel. An additional incentive was the 15% off at B&Q - not that any of us could be bothered to check that 15% off B&Q prices actually worked out less than other people. Neatly slotted into a disabled bay and in we went to be confronted by a shelved array of hosing products, maybe 6 feet high by 8 feet wide. Less choice I think than Homebase, although the same sort of deal. Hozelock or own brand. Brain still not in too good nick. Gazed at all the hoses and the boxes of fittings and failed to compute. At least it took a while. Changed down a few gears and attacked one connection at a time. Got there in the end and bought two reels of hose, one with fittings one without, one flat pack reel and a connector. Two reels because 30m is not long enough for the whole garden and the connector to join the two together. At least, so I thought.
Get the stuff home, remembered not to throw the instructions out and settled down to assemble the flat pack reel. Brain now motoring as I managed this in about 15 minutes without any cursing, broken finger nails or any other disaster. Install one reel of hose in the reel and install the other reel of hose on the tap. At which point I realise that the connector is surplus to requirements as the end of the tap hose can plug into the side of the reel. BH very pleased with her new toy - the connections of which do not appear to drip, let alone leak.
The old flat pack hose (the sort of hose which rolls up flat. Clear plastic waterproof tube protected by a nylon outer tube) consigned to the dustbin. This has served well for more than twenty years but is a bit battered. Fittings were missing and it did leak, never having been the same after the foxes had a go at it one night. But it was very easy to get in and out of the shed and did not take up much space. We shall see if the rubbery replacement is an improvement. A good test will be to see whether it survives us or not.
The one remaining puzzle being the apparent demise of flat pack hose. They still exist on the Internet but they do not exist in any of the three shops for this sort of thing near us. I still think they are a good deal. So why does no-one else? Was there a plot by the rubbery hose people to drive the flat hose people off the market place? Another example of the workings of the free market?
# posted by Jim @ 8:59 AM 
