Water, water: gas and electricity

Once the trench was dug for the sleeper wall that will retain the bed across the back of the garden, it soon started filling up with water.  There was a steady trickle out of the side of the trench, which is not a winning formula for any kind of retaining wall, let alone oak.  Today, Duncan has dug a trench down to the drain on the terrace, following the line of what I’d said I suspected to be an existing land drain. Sure enough, a spit or so down is a ceramic pipe leading to a plastic one leading to the side of the drain.   (It seems that there is quite a network of land drains under the back garden, which is nevertheless swamp-like for much of the winter.) There was a pretty impressive gush of water when he finished the trench, and the water has continued to trickle steadily down ever since.  So the chaps have a bit of design work to do to ensure that the water continues free to drain away: we seem to have a seasonal underground stream.  As Ben said yesterday, it’s just as well the work wasn’t done in the summer, since the problem would not have been in evidence until the winter rains came.  It’s not often that I feel grateful for weather such as we’ve had in recent days!  All this will add significantly to the final bill, but the money’s doing bugger-all in the bank, so we might as well get value for it.  So, it looks like I’m on tea making duties for a few more days.

Yesterday’s other little surprise was that our energy supplier ceased trading without warning.  No notification from the company itself: I learned about it in an email from Money Saving Expert.  On their advice I took meter readings, emailed them to myself with a date stamp, and cancelled the direct debit.  I have today received an automated shriek from Green Network Energy - from beyond the grave, as it were.  Evidently, the regulator will reassign accounts of this and another newly defunct company to another supplier, pending which we and the half-million other customers affected are told to sit on our hands and not switch suppliers for the time being.  I wonder what this will mean for the smart meters we had installed recently with so much Ach und Krach.  I really begin to wonder about the Thatcherian clamour for competition and privatisation.  Prices have steadily increased, customer service has gone from mediocre to poor, and customers have to act regularly to avoid being slammed back on to suppliers’ top tariffs.  I begin to hanker after a state monopoly, though it’s hard to see how that would achieve customer focus.  It would at least stop us paying excessive profits to the owners and shareholders of energy companies - most of which are foreign states with virtually intact home monopolies.  Snarl.