It's been fine weather today. I went for a walk around Lake Henley, the man-mae lake in Masterton. I had to. A man was bashing and hammering at the front door.

No, he wasn't a debt collector (although I'd gladly give him any of mine). He was replacing my front door with a new see-thru one. I am expecting Dot, the 80-year-old dear next door, to be standing outside doing the Peeping Dot bit once it gets dark. It's tough being so attractive to women.

It was interesting walking around Lake Henley. It was shore-to-shore Canadian geese day. It must be bird-shooting season.

I don't mind these geese visiting, except that they poop all over the paths and as you walk around the lake trying to avoid stepping in it, you look like you're doing the Macarena.

Anyway, having danced my way around the lake, I got back to my car, shooed away some greedy ducks that thought I was a bearer of all things bread-like. Then I started the car, and narrowly missed making a duck pancake of one Mallard as I drove away.

Why did the duck cross the road? Hey, I’m sure there’s a joke there somewhere.

On my way home, I popped into the supermarket and bought a water purifier/filter.

Once I got it home I carefully unpacked it, removed the instructions that were inside the filter unit, and then carefully fitted the inlet pipe to the cold tap.

When I turned the tap on, a very pretty fountain promptly erupted from where the water pipe from the tap enters the unit itself. But, hey, the floor needed washing anyway because the man, while fitting the door, had put dust all over my lovely imitation tile lino.

In case you are wondering, the man made the floor dusty in a simple way. He took out his big green thingy (now, now ladies) inserted the end bit and got it going in and out (Ladies! Please!) and sawed the door off.

There was no careful removal of the doorframe with sledgehammer and crowbar. Nope, he got out his electric saw and simply sawed around the doorframe, through nails and all. I got the feeling that this guy would use a chainsaw to dice carrots.

I have to admit that he did sweep up most of the sawdust and wood remnants later, but the fine dust stuck to the lino. It could have been worse. He could have got it on the bacon on the bench. You know: Dust to dust. Rashers to rashers.

Anyway, after I’d cleaned up the floor I tried turning the tap down a bit. The fountain then became more drippish. So, since I could now fill a glass with filtered water without wearing a raincoat, I did so. Then I tried a sip or two of filtered water.

I have to say that if that is what filtered water tastes like, I think I favour water with bugs in it. Maybe it’s just because I’m a meat eater. I like body in my diet.

So tomorrow I’m taking the filter back. I might buy an electric jug in its place because electric jugs are fun.

They have this neat water level window and if you stand there and watch and listen, you can hear them starting to heat up. Once they’ve been making noises for a while, you can see small indications that things are coming to the boil. Then, when you reach boiling point there’s a loud rumbling and lots of wobbles. Jugs always remind me of the mother-in-law, somehow.

But I’d take a jug over a mother-in-law, any day. The jug has an automatic cut-off switch.

--
Allan