. . . . Ricks Extra Long Summer . . . .: pugh pugh barney mcgrew cuthbert dibble grub

May is here. It is a wonderful, beautiful sunny day and most of the locals are at work in their stuffy offices and stores. I am lucky. I have a massage booked in about an hour and having completed my work for the day I have time to veg out in the back garden for half an hour and relax, safe in the knowledge that no matter how bad my sunburn is tonight, I will at least not have to worry about snow for a few days!! (Last year there was snow in May)

Well, are we sitting confortably? Good, I shall begin.

If you have been following recent events then you may already know most of whats coming in this instalment of the extra long summer - If you dont follow recent events, then you wont. Either way, there are now added pictures and more 'BIG WRITING', which will no doubt keep engaged on the subject matter and give you something to think about whilst dropping the kids off at the pool later.

FIRE AND FLOOD!!

That could have been the subject matter and heading above, but a a fan of Trumpton I felt the need to give a nod to the brave firefighters of that tiny toytown as well as the ones here in Winnipeg....First though,...flood!!!

Quite simply our basement resembled a swimming pool a few weeks ago - We had at least 4 places where water seeped, dribbled or cascaded into our underground dungeon and quite spoilt the atmosphere down there, Its no fun sitting watching TV with a damp carpet rolled up showing a damper concrete floor and having to change sopping wet towels every 8 hours to stop the water spreading. So we bit the proverbial bullet and got the experts in - A company called Abalon (who have some fantastic old adverts, see link in a minute) to fix our problem. So for the last two weeks Greg, Josh, Willy and the rest of the Abalon gang worked to dig to the bottom of out houses foundations and dig out our weeping tile to replace it as well as waterproofing the entore foundation at the same time.
Heres the brilliant advert!!

The weeping tile if you dont know, if an underground drain, which directs water into the actual drains and keeps it out of the basement, Funnily, when teh digging was complete our weeping tile wasnt broken - It simply didnt exist! We didnt have one - So thats one main reason why the house was wet! Unfortunately, this meant that the guys also had to drill out our basement floor to install a drainage system for the new weeping tile they were installing - more money and a lot more hassle. The guys were great though. We chatted and had a laugh every day and they worked their arses off to get the job done in under two weeks. Here are some photos of the work...

Before

The back - waterproofed!!

I climbed down for a closer look

The side of the house

You can just see the outline of a huge crack which was letting water through.

Big hole!

Mmmm waterfroofed!!

So that was that and now we are waiting for a big storm so we can see what happens - Hopefully no water!!!!

The other big news around here was the fire......

I woke up a couple of weeks ago at 3.45am when I heard snow ploughs outside. That was weird as there was no snow, so I looked outside to see what was making the noise and saw an orange glow in the sky and 'sparkles' floating down from the sky. There was also flashing lights and sirens really close - so I kicked Buffy out of bed and went outside. We knew it was close and didnt want to risk it being next door and saw that it was in fact the new apartment block being built at the end of the street - about 7 or 8 houses away. It was buring out of control and as we watched caught the houses either side which also began to burn down. We later discovered that two local women had been saved by the firefighters after being trapped in one house - but both houses are now going to be demolished and the two families lost everything. It is suspected arson as apparently, people had been seen inside the apartment block shortly before the fire started. Its quite scary to see such a big fire so close and the fire chief later said in an interview that its one of the biggest fires he has seen in his 26 year career.

A couple of weeks earlier I had taken a photo of the block...

Before it burnt down...

When it burnt down the traffic lights melted as did the plastic windows of the church opposite and the glass in the bus stop shattered. The flames reached well above the height of the trees.