Today, we needed to go and read the water meter. Because of complicated calculations about how best to run a water line to our house back in 1961, it's actually located in the next road - somewhere. So we went hunting, armed with several tools, including a medium sized pick-axe, looked for it. We lifted up various possible metal covers - including the large one on the right of the picture, which contained a lot of very amateur looking wires; I found another which seemed full of water; and an electricity meter on a nearby wall - and something that said "gas" which I wouldn't touch - but no water meter. Eventually I spotted someone who lives in a flat in the house behind, and chased her down, and she thought - Eureka! - that it was under that pile of leaves behind my father's right hand. So the iron lid was prised up, and I took a photo of the meter numbers, and the job was - fairly efficiently! - done.
My father's had that coat since 1957, by the way.
[oh - and why did we need to make a reading? Last year, my father had a long-lasting undetected leak - undetected until a neighbor realised his back yard was turning swampy - from a frost-damaged outside tap. So there was a big water bill. This year, the water company did an "estimated" reading for the same period - which only asked for payment for 2,250 or so cubic meters of water, as opposed to the 58 cubic meters that he'd actually - we found - used. They must have assumed that he'd used that pick-axe to dig a substantial swimming pool]
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