The Artesian Well

The importance of knowing the exact location of the water and electricity supplies to one's home, cannot be stressed enough. To suddenly find you have no electricity, and an artesian well flooding your front garden, is not the best start to the day. The owner of the JCB had an unforgettable experience to tell his family round the dinner-table, the day he struck, not one, but both of our services.

To be fair to him, it was not his fault, since neither he, nor we, knew of their exact location. As luck would have it, he was also one of the local farmers, and able to find among his great store of implements, the magic key to turn off the water supply at the mains in the nick of time, before the flood reached our house, and turned it into a swimming pool. Having local knowledge, he was also able to locate an electrician, who, after having a good laugh to himself, re-located the electricity cable away from the proposed area for the actual pond .

"That was a great pond, Mum! Pity it's all gone!", quipped one of our sons, as he looked out of his bedroom window early the next morning, only to discover there was no sign of the water. Thank goodness for that, we thought, pleased at the realisation we had free-draining soil. But, it slowly dawned on us that we would need to buy a large amount of butyl to line both ponds, to the tune of £1000.