O Dia dos artesãos

'Twas on a Friday morning
The painter made a start
With undercoats and overcoats he painted every part
Every nook and every cranny
But I found when he was gone
He'd painted over the gas tap and I couldn't turn it on! 

Flanders & Swann 

We do be living on the farrrm thirty years. In 1996, the farmhouse was in neglected, but not ruinous condition: hole in the front door, hole in the roof, missing gutters, no running water. After our neighbours John & Michael sunk a bore-hole to 30m, and famous Paddy Butler submersed a pump, we (by which I mean She) sourced a plumber to capture the upwelling for taps and radiators. The plumber was not local, and nor were we, but nobody told him about the acid groundwater, so he fitted everything out with [industry standard] copper pipe. The copper hot-water cylinder failed within two years; about the same time as the pressure cylinder at the well-head. The pipes to the bathroom lasted a bit longer and were eventually replaced by qualpex plastic . . . but not before serially compromising the kitchen ceiling below.

For reasons, The Beloved decided that 2026 was when we would future-proof the house. She canvassed her network for a house-painter, electrician, plumber, stove-guy. Because our network leans Woo, most of the new Tradies ran eccentric hours and work-practice. Since 27 April, it's been a Napoleonic 100 Days campaign of disruption. It may be, should be, standard practice to supply tea at tea-breaks and who can offer tea without biscuits or brack? Hereabouts, in echoes from pre-1970 haying meitheals, contractors working all day get a full meat&potatoes dinner at lunchtime. In 2026, we found ourselves sitting to dinner [no fish!] at 8pm being regaled with stories about Communist Poland or tea and sandwiches [no crusts!] at 6pm hearing about chai and cricket among Calcutta's dispossessed. Not to mention exchanging cakes for flapjacks with a New Irish family in the next county.

Last Monday was scheduled to be O Dia dos Artesãos [The Day of the Tradies: Sparks + Séan-the-tree + Slappie Mike] and The Beloved was called away to the Déise at short notice.  It's always alright on the night, but I find dealing with people and their hydration is stressful, so I requested Tuesday as O Dia do Cobertor Ponderado [Duvet-day = Day of the Weighty Blanket]. When the Electrician rescheduled for Wednesday, my stress drained a bit but spread a bit and it rather became A Semana dos Artesãos. WTF the Portuguese? Another recent addition to our lives is from Brasil and my Portuguese is better than her English, so Thursdays involves a different sort Bom dia, obrigado of interpersonal stress.

Our new plumber [the sixth!] was called because of an external leak which he diagnosed and stopped in a couple of hours. Predictably, he did the usual thing of looking at the work of previous plumbers, shaking his head ruefully and saying there was Much better way to do that. There are A Lot of T-junctions in the plumbing array in the shed because it's complicated with gauges, pumps and, like, junctions [picture at the link]. These junctions are connected by short lengths of copper pipe, but copper is a disaster waiting to happen if the water is pH5 (acid). Installing the Stop revealed [see L below] a wafer-thin corroded fragment of copper pipe. I guess we are beyond the half-life of copper in acid and we'll have to replace all the pipework if we want central heating this Winter. Not for me, mind, I just bundle up in sweaters if it's colder than 15°C. As an indication of The End Times, you should know that scrap copper is worth $6,600/tonne = €6/kg. That'd almost double the price $3.60/kg at the birth of The Blob [prev].