Dear Val and Malcolm,
Short story that you might find amusing, but sorry no photos of the event.
NevOur Cantonnier/ man who mends the roads, stopped by the other day and asked "Can you help us run 50 metres of water pipe underground?", "Sure," I said "when?", "Wednesday, we start at 7am." "Okay see you then." Wednesday, I was up before the sun, charged myself with a cup of tea and some toast, off I went. Louise said "It's going to be hot, you should wear shorts." My response was "I might be crawling around in the dirt, so longs are best for that."
I met up with Christian, Cedric, Benoit and another whose name I did not catch at the Marie. The water pipe stood nearly six foot high and had a mind of its own. I kept in the background as I am sure there was a plan and there was - just not that well thought out. The idea was to tie some string to a polystyrene ball and using a leaf blower to blow it along the storm drain to the next manhole entry point. Well funnily enough it did not work, I said rather helpfully "I have some drain rods and a chimney sweep we could join together. It might reach." So Christian and I drove back to mine and loaded up with drain rods, gaffer tape and a big torch then returned to the job in hand.
Unfortunately we were short 3 or 4 metres and this started to remind me of that song "Right Said Fred" by Bernard Cribbens. "Okay," said Christian "Lets scrap that idea," and he strapped a piece of bar to the end of the pipe to keep it reasonably straight and then we just shoved the pipe in the manhole.
We were going great guns for 28 of the 30 metres but then the pipe became stuck against the side of the drain and it would not go any further. We stuck our heads underground shining the torch and the pipe was just out of reach. This is where my caving experience paid off. The drainage channel was just wide enough for my shoulders to fit in, about 400mm in diameter so while Cedric held the torch I jumped in to the inspection chamber and wriggled back and forth until I could push myself along the drainage channel toward the water pipe as I thought to myself good job I'm not wearing shorts. It was a bit of a squeeze and I had to inch myself along using just my toes. I had Christian and co pull the pipe back whilst I positioned a spade to guide the pipe around the obstruction, "Push!" I yelled, which echoed hollowly toward Christian. Suddenly, the pipe cleared the obstruction and was rapidly approaching my head and I could not wriggle back fast enough, "Stop!" I shouted, which they did as I slowly shuffled and wriggled my way back toward the exit and Cedric helped me out of the inspection chamber. Now I know how a mole must feel.
Shortly the pipe was in the clear, the next 20 metre section was a lot easier and the drainrods were long enough to carry the rope through the rest of the drains and then it was a simple job of tying the pipe to the rope and heaving it through. So three hours later we had completed our part of the job, leaving Christian and Cedric to connect the pipe up to the pump. So, covered in mud and debris we rested over a cup of coffee and croissants and I managed to get a lift back home.
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