Doh !!!

Noticed last week that the pond was starting to get cloudy, which is normal, normally, at this time of year with the summer sun causing a plantlife and microbe "bloom" in the water.

Except that I've got an ultraviolet filter fitted which is supposed to clean all that sort of stuff out of the water and leave the pond nice and clear right through the year, I just leave it running all year, never check it, not supposed to touch it actually as inside the filter trap is a "live" colony of all sorts of super-bacteria stuff that eats the stuff you don't want in the water - actually it works by magic as far as I'm aware.

So I checked it.

It wasn't working.

There was no water running through it, and there should have been.

Fished the pump out from its home in the bottom of the pond, it was working but not pumping any water out, the "fans" on the whirring thing were broken, in short the pump was knackered.

Told Suzanne I'd need to buy a new one but with one eye on the fact that we're selling the house she told me "no" even when I asked seven or eight times. A new pump would be around £50 or so , so maybe she had a point.

So I bought one on eBay for £6.

Went to fit it this morning, connected it up no problem, switched it on and water came through, we were back in business, just had the old one to remove then.

Now the old pump obviously had an electrical cable running to it and I'd buried it under some sand and some flat stones that line the edge of the pond, and I could have removed the stones and gently tugged the cable out of the sand covering.

But I didn't.

I yanked the cable and it gave a little so I gave it a bigger tug and then I put all of my delicate frame behind it and gave it a really big pull.

It came out.

And in doing so it dislodged a big flat stone from the side of the pond, which ever so slowly slide into the water, sharp edge first.

Fished the stone out and hoped that it hadn't damaged the pond liner.

Came out a couple of hours later to find my pond lower by at least two inches. Fuckpigs.

And thats where its stayed all afternoon, the stone has obviously punctured the liner near the top (fortunately) so I now have a slightly shallower pond than before with a rim of liner visible all the way around - I'm going to shovel some sand on it tomorrow to give the sparrows and blackbirds a beach when they bathe, the frogs will probably enjoy it too.

Every cloud etc...