Diary entries - 5th and 6th December 1973

Not much sleep again last night. Awoken by chinese drip torture other side of wall next to head. Rapid drips and echoing down below and omnibus large drip! Quickly sleep jump out of bed to find gaping hole in plastic pipe near tap in Bill's stewdew. So then downstairs finding drippings in hall on table I made. Lynne has been awake all this time but thought the noise was from outside! Look around for more leaks, don't see any so outside so cut off the tap near the graveyard. The snow is thawing, drips everywhere. The useless torch doesn't find tap under manure? First time second time turns the water off. Back to quiet comparitively warm uncomfortable bed. It can't go on like this for much longer surely?! - A travelling barber calls but we need all our warm hair. Thought it was the gendarmes again. Abortive attempts to fix pipe ( I hope ) Water from pump is going now so alright. This has filled Wednesday up quite nicely. Nothing else will happen, or will it? THURSDAY. No nothing much did. A General Strike today in France but postman came and went just the same. Thursday is a bit more exciting though - to a degree. And talking of degrees - it's a lot warmer ( milder) today- feels warm outside although a ceiling of grey cloud still covers the sky. It's as if it never snowed - no trace of it is left, just it's faint ghost, the flattened grass, the bedraggled flowers and plants. Feel like an old peasant , puts me in another distant time long past , slooth! slooth! creek! slooth! Putty stuff on broken pipe still as soft as a baby's bum! Went to Cordes this afternoon on the mobydick for d'ashe and veg. and stop at garage for two litres of juice and ask for a pompe - but the man explains that he has none and that a certian type of pompe will do - not a bicyclette pompe or a foot pompe but a mobylette pompe. I drove slowly as to not attract large lorries on sharper bends.