The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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11:18am on Saturday, 17th April, 2021:
Anecdote
My wife and I spent an hour and forty-five minutes this morning looking for a 3cm-diameter hole that's somewhere in a square metre of lawn.
This was occasioned by my decision to put out the rotary clothesline after having wintered it in the garage. The clothesline slots into a pipe in a hole. This is the hole we were seeking.
Rakes, garden forks, spades and a metal-detector meant for finding wiring in walls failed to reveal the hole's location. We went over every possible place it could have been and didn't find it. I was all for taking up the turf to find it that way, but my wife wouldn't let me.
Eventually, I managed to locate it by looking at a 2018 photo that had it in the background, and from that establishing a line between two fixed points. The hole was just to the right of that line. Stabbing away at the grass with a screwdriver finally revealed it.
We'd gone over that same piece of grass I don't know how many times, but probably at least five or six (including a couple of sweeps with the screwdriver). On this occasion, I just happened to get lucky and hit the side of the pipe, from which the hole revealed itself beneath some grass that had overgrown it. It was perhaps 10cm from where I'd first estimated its position to be.
My washing is now drying on the clothesline, but once it's off I shall be thoroughly documenting the location of the hole using photography and measurements. When I take the clothesline in come autumn, I shall be marking the hole's location with half a brick.
What's particularly annoying is that the pipe doesn't appear to be made out of metal, so my metal-detector surveys were never going to find it.
I expect it will rain now.
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