More Practical Matters

Just in case you thought that I was enjoying the life of Riley in my retirement, let me tell you of a few extra things at the church that have conspired to occupy my time.

To an extent, these are reflected in the photographs on the centre pages. Unfortunately, this month there have not been the gatherings and events to photograph, so no people pictures. And I forgot to record the latest Lunch Club, and I was too occupied with setting up at Ewell when the Brownies’ snowdrops were displayed for donations for the ‘Lest We Forget’ Association! So ‘this month ‘backstage’ photographs have pride of place.

The first thing that happened was that the Unity Hall dishwasher wouldn’t work. This was eventually traced to the main water supply being turned off – something that never normally happens, and took some time to find, but very easy to rectify.

Then there was the continuing saga of the Unity Hall sound system. Our technician – no, not me! – diagnosed a faulty main amplifier and two faulty loudspeakers of different sizes. The church is fitted with the same loudspeakers as one of these, so one was redeployed into Unity Hall. The second faulty loudspeaker was removed, and both are off for repair. The amplifier is a duplicate of the one in the Longhurst Room system, so this was redeployed in Unity Hall, while the faulty amplifier was sent for repair. This has now been returned and awaits installation in the Longhurst Room and setting up, as soon as our technician is available. Also the original radio microphones are in for repair. It is likely that we will not leave these microphones available for all and sundry to use – they seem to get abused!

The next thing was when Terry, while cleaning Unity Hall, reported a water leak above the kitchen hatch: so just before midnight I was delving into the small eaves hatches enclosing the hot water tank supplying the kitchen with hot water. It appeared that the ball valve had failed to cut off completely the cold water inlet to the tank, which was therefore overflowing. So I spoke to it sternly, and it has behaved itself since then!

Then Pamela said that the hot water supply had slowed to a mere trickle. This has happened before, and last time this was due, I believe, to scale in the hot water tank falling over the outlet. The proper thing to do would be to turn off the water, empty the tank, remove it and clean it out. Yes, well, maybe some time in the future! But I connected the cold tap to the hot tap and forced the cold water the wrong way up the hot water pipe to dislodge the scale – a temporary fix, but it took less that five minutes, and it works!

And the last thing this month was a remedy that will facilitate the opening of the padlock on the gate out to the Depot Road Car Park. The lack of light makes manipulation of the combination lock very difficult in the dark. We have been thinking about extending the circuit for the lighting down the passageway at the side of Unity Hall, but this would involve digging up part of the pathway to run the new cable, and wuld be quite expensive. So I saw a small wall-mounted LED lamp in Dyers, with motion detection and automatic switch-off 12 seconds after the movement had stopped. This is now fitted to one of the gate pillars, and I hope that this will stop those complaints coming in! I also hope that it doesn’t get pinched!

Retirement?? Yeah, right!