DIY shops and fixing things

It is the first (and probably last) sunny day in ages, where did we spend it?  In DIY shops!! We were getting stuff for a bit of a kitchen upgrade in La Mongie, but as a fabulous side effect I fixed our kitchen tap at home! It has been getting weedier for a while. Living in London I never considered what is inside a tap. Why would I - any problems call ‘a man’. But life here is different.  We bought a water pressure meter to try to track down the problem. When I took the tap apart to use it, I found lots of little black bits that have obviously been sucked up by the pump at some point and got stuck in the filter (no I didn’t know there would be a filter in there - we had ruled out bits getting through the pump as surely we would see them in the water). I have washed them out and the tap is back to normal. Hurrah! Ok it doesn’t make me a genius, but I am happy to feel that over time we are getting to grips with the challenges of doing everything ourselves (difficult to find a plumber to tackle the oddities of our swamp/spring/eccentric pump water system). It was very hard and stressful at the beginning, but is getting easier with time. It made the missed sunny day feel worthwhile!