Summertime. The livin' ain't easy...
Exactly how much shite can one man buy on eBay? A newsletter to find out...
Have you ever thrown up so hard you thought you might die?
GREETINGS humans, from this latest edition of the newsletter, in which we will learn about the various ways in which water and electricity do not mix. If that sounds ominous, let me assure you – it is.
I’ve had a whole load of new subscribers recently, so for their benefit (hello new subscribers!) I should first explain that this newsletter started off as a way to document all the stupid stuff my husband Lee impulsively buys on eBay. It is why we have at various times owned a crossbow, a shite caravan, 8-12 pairs of frogs legs and more fridge-freezers than most catering establishments when I discovered Lee was running a part-time, semi-legal speak-easy style meat racket.
I digress.
Given that the earth is now very literally on fire much of the time, one of his smarter idiotic purchases was our paddling pool. We’ve been steadily upgrading over the years from those little round inflatable types, getting larger and larger until pre-pandemic we got one of the big ones with a metal frame. After filling it to the brim with freezing cold water, getting cross when none of our children actually used it then leaving it to fill with leaves, flies, and effectively ‘rewild’ for months, we knew there was work to be done.
As luck would have it, Lee is 1. Very creative when it comes to engineering, and 2. Not afflicted with the same amount of caution as most people when it comes to buggering about with water, electricity, a gas boiler and several metres of piping. I arrived home one day to find him and Dan the plumber finishing the install of a new heat exchanger. It acts like a radiator, running off our central heating, but actually heating the pool. Result: tropical paradise.
The heater is so efficient that once, when Lee forgot he had left it running, the pool was roughly the right temperature to broil a lobster. We knew this because Lee pushed in our tiny little son for lolz and broiled him, accidentally. You’ve never seen a child so red exit a pool so swiftly. The following year, we built a raised deck around the edge too, so now it even looks like a proper pool, with storage space under the deck for the filter, the pump and all the eleventy billion chemicals you need to ensure no-one gets legionnaires disease.
Let’s fast forward. Last week, we left the country for the first time in three years. We had a week in Greece in a lovely place with a big, proper pool. It was gorgeous. A perfect beach too. Cocktails on tap. The only downside was the journey time home – up at dawn for two hours on a trundling little minibus over mountain roads, hours at the airport, a lengthy flight and then back to rush hour traffic on the British roads. What we all really needed to do when we finally arrived back at home, exhausted, was to flop.
What actually happened when we arrived home was that we immediately noticed that there was no sound of the swimming pool pump working. Odd, we thought. It’s off. How has that happened?
Next, we noticed that the oven light was also off. Oh dear.
We go straight out to look at the pump. The whole area is wet. Very wet.
It’s at this point we realise two things: one - we must not have turned off the pool-refilling hose at the tap, which has popped open under the pressure, flooding the pool machinery area, and two – this has tripped the power.
We’ve been away for seven days.
Ordinarily, this would be bad. When the country has experienced the hottest two days ever on record – well.
At this point, I would like to remind new readers that Lee kleptomaniacally owns several too many freezers full of enormous cuts of meat. What could possibly go wrong?!
And it’s here that we start to notice the smell. I look over to our (indoor) freezer. There’s an ominous dark, seeping puddle creeping from its base. Lee utters every swear word he knows and heads immediately back outside to check the other, small freezer he keeps close by the pool machinery for reasons known only unto himself – the VIP meat collection, if you will.
Everything goes a bit black here. It happens in slow motion. I open the freezer door, unleashing a full slasher-movie’s worth of rancid meat slushie which cascades everywhere, accompanied by the distant roaring of Lee, vomiting up his whole soul somewhere nearby.
Later, he will tell me that he was so violently sick he gave himself an actual nosebleed, thought he was genuinely having a heart attack or entering the afterlife, and felt so dizzy he had to lie down for a full half hour to recover.
An indoor freezer failing is one thing. But when your outdoor freezer fails, it’s 41 degrees in the shade, and flies find their way in through the vents, what you are confronted with when you open the door is a very hot box full of putrid farm animal parts boiling with a billion maggots.
Welcome home!! You must now burn down your house!
Two hours of bleaching and gagging later, the indoor fridge and freezer were sorted. (me). The outdoor hellscape? Lee just turned the power back on, announcing that he simply didn’t have it in him to risk another near-death experience, and that the only way to deal with this horror was to re-freeze it. I suspect his plan is simply to ratchet strap the whole freezer shut and bury it in a shallow grave where years later it may waste several hours of forensic police time if/when it is ever discovered.
That’s all for this week. TLDR: we fucked up, tripped our power and came home to the farm version of Saw.
Things I found jolly lately
I was absolutely crashingly hungover when I discovered a glorious thread on Twitter all about people’s ‘happy thought’ fodder - I watched this video of a girl getting her dive wrong approximately three billion times and I’m not sure I have ever laughed so hard. Sincere apologies to my mate George, who rang me for a chat whilst I was in the middle of watching it, and had to endure a good few minutes probably wondering why I was hysterically crying and screaming.
The rest of the thread is well worth a look, containing as it does this gem. No, I have no idea what is happening either, but it’s hard not to laugh along anyway.
I went camping the other week on our annual trip with a load of mates to brilliant Wing Hall campsite (it’s ace, check it out). As is tradition, my mate Lynn and I were last up, she falls asleep in her chair around the camp fire while I shuffle around putting empty beer cans in the bin, but not before we had actually wet our pants laughing at the commentary of these two drunk people attempting to navigate some stairs…
Did I write about the play Jerusalem starring Mark Rylance and Mackenzie Crook last time? It was earth-shatteringly brilliant, genuinely one of the most incredible performances I have ever seen. So much so I’ve wangled tickets to see it again in a few weeks (jammy). I’m pretty sure it’s sold out, but on the off-chance not, GO. You won’t regret it. I saw it after a wonderful day at the British Museum, and wrote about how both made me feel some kind of way - it’s on my blog here if you’d like to read it.
Late to the party here, but the book The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller is wonderful
I’m off to Camp Bestival this week, the theme is Desert Island Disco so I’m off to finish sticking mirrorball tiles and neon fringing onto some hats for the fancy dress day now. Previous years have caused all sorts of joy, so watch this space for photographic evidence of our stupid outfits. Thanks for reading, see you next time!
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About me
My brother told me that all the blurb I usually put here is too long and boring, so for brevity, I’m Lindsay Butcher and I write words down for a living. I’ll write for you too if you like. Come follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.
Want to read more? Check out previous newsletter editions here, or feast your brain on my blog AndOtherIdiots.
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Definitely read-aloud worthy! Despite the hideous nature of all that happened, I’m very glad to read of your adventures again 😝
Hilarious. I read it out loud to my partner, too!