Pool of tears

I gotta tell ya, I'm a woman on the edge. I can feel it. I'm like a pressure cooker and am about to blow. I cannot deal with anymore stuff going wrong. What is it about this year? So far in the space of the last two months we've had:

- our kettle died - new one needed
- our microwave died - new one needed
- our washingmachine died (but could at least be fixed instead of replaced)
- our dishwasher has begun leaking (this problem has so far been ignored)
- our roof started leaking requiring us to rethatch it for a cool £13 000
- the three year old decided that the rotary washing line made an excellent swing and has broken it. New one needed, not yet bought.
- the kids needed new beds as trying to squeeze a five year old into a cot bed just wasn't working. So new ones had to be bought
- the phone died and had to be replaced
- the printer cartridges for the printer I have (which isn't THAT old) are no longer being made. This means I will very soon need a new printer
- my computer is so old and slow that it gasps along at a 1995 pace. I'm ignoring this because I cannot afford a new one
- but topping the list of things that have gone wrong is the swimming pool.

If you ever buy a house, no matter how lovely the house is, DO NOT BUY IT IF IT HAS A SWIMMING POOL. Not unless you or your partner are a swimming pool engineer.

Our pool was built in the early 80s. Everything about it needed to be overhauled (including the fence around it). We have until now ignored this because pools are expensive. VERY.

But given the forecasts for a hot summer, we thought it was high time we fixed it. So we got a man what does to come and fix it. And he did. And I paid him £1200 of your British Pounds for the priviledge. For one glorious (yet rain filled) week the pool worked (we didn't go in it because of the rain and cool temperatures so the fact that it worked sort of passed us by).

This weekend I had to backwash the pool. I followed the instructions given to me. Except, one of the vital instructions (which was told to husband, not me) was that the backwash hose must be kept straight with no kinks in it. Unbeknownst to me, husband had mown the lawn and had curled the hose up. Husband hadn't passed either of these facts onto me. So I backwashed the pool and low and behold, the fitting holding the hose in burst. Costly mistake number 1.

Then I attempted to empty the leaf basket, as per the instructions. I did this but noticed as I was doing it that it meant plenty of air was getting into the system. The man wot fixes pools had managed to get all the air out. But I didn't know how else to empty the basket without opening it and letting air in.

Anyway, I then tried to manually vacuum the pool. This worked for about 1 minute before the suction went - exactly as it had done before I paid £1200 to have it fixed. I guessed it must be air in the system. Husband came and helped to bleed the system. It still wouldn't suck. So I resorted to the automatic cleaner instead.

The automatic cleaner got stuck, so while I attempted to move it to the shallow end, a pipe came undone. So I had to turn the cleaner off to get it back on. Once reattached, I went back into the shed of evil (as I've now come to call it) and turned it all back on again. But apparently I turned something on in the wrong order. I still don't know quite what.

In a split second, the filter lid cracked open and sprayed water everywhere. I hit the 'TURN EVERYTHING OFF AND PANIC SWITCH' and ran to call husband for help. (You might be wondering right now why he isn't in charge of the pool as this is obviously a boy job. Good question. One I have asked myself many, many times. Answer is still awaited). Husband took one look at the cracked lid and proceeded to have a strop. Rightly so. I had in the space of 20 minutes managed to break three things that before I got there were all working well.

He stropped. I wept. I stropped. We all ignored the pool. We didn't have a happy father's day.

This morning I called the pool man. I explained, rather embarrassed, about the littany of disasters that had taken place. I could hear him rolling his eyes down the phone.

Now here's the really, really good bit. Our type of filter no longer exists. It is obsolete. The chances of finding a spare part for the bit that has cracked is roughly equivalent to our chances of winning the lotto, which would incidentally solve all of our problems.

The man said he would call around and hunt for the proverbial needle in the haystack, but we'd probably need to buy a new filter. Filters are not cheap. They are vast pieces of machinery that probably easily cost the same as a pleasant weekend mini break to Paris, including a champagne dinner.

But without one, the pool cannot function. At all. So we can either pay for this new piece of kit or just ignore the pool altogether and laugh off the £1200 already invested in it. I'm all for filling it in or turning it into a fish pond or emptying it out and making it a skate boarding pit.

I have no money left. Nothing. Not a penny. The tax man will be expecting a small cheque from me by the end of this week and he might just have to have a tear filled telephone call from me instead.

Sigh.

I don't like being a grown up.

Money - or rather the lack of it

Today I came perilously close to what would have been my most humiliating moment of my 35-year old life. I was once again in Sainsburys, adding to their profit margins. We'd had a relatively pain free shop, had gone through the checkout and packed all the bags. It was time to pay. First of all, the silly lady wanted to know whether this was a month's worth of shopping because it came to £155. "Ha ha," I said. Then realised she was serious. "Er, no actually it's just a week." She looked at me as though I was some kind of frivolous spendaholic. I wanted to point out rising inflation rates and how the cost of food was a global issue as discussed by G8 leaders but it didn't seem the time or place.

Anyway, I pulled out my card to pay and after punching in the code, she said in a furtive whisper, "I'm afraid it's been declined."Really?" I asked feeling the first flickers of panic. "Can you try again?". So she did. "It's been declined again," she whispered. Now it has been a while since I checked my bank balance and I know the cost of things have gone up, but I'm not normally completely broke.

Despite having a wallet full of cards, I only know the pin to one of them. The one that was declined. Actually, I know the pin to another joint credit card, but I'm sure I remember my husband saying that he'd cancelled it. So there I was, with a trolley full of melting ice cream, two small boys bouncing a new ball I'd got them so that it careered off everyone's trolleys and just generally got in the way, and there was the queue of impatient looking people standing staring at me.

I realised that not only would I have the very embarrassing situation of having to say sorry, I can't buy these after all, but I'd also have a house with no food in it and a small problem of no toilet paper, a situation that would stay that way until husband returns home on the weekend. I rummaged in my mental larder trying to imagine what I could make out of a tin of carrots I'd won at the tombola at the village fete, some dried pasta and half a cabbage that would last 3 of us for 4 days.

Growing redder and redder in the face, I said: "Let's try another card shall we." I pulled out a card, which since receiving it three years ago have never known the pin too. About a month ago I asked the bank to send me a pin code. They did. I looked at it. And promptly didn't give it another moment's thought. There are too many other things to be thinking about and remembering besides yet another 4 digit number.

So there I was, like a scene from Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, the clock ticking, the scary music playing (that was probably just in my head), I stared at the key pad thing and willed my brain to remember the code. I punched in a number that seemed vaguely familiar and looked at the lady, who was also holding her breath, to see if it had worked.

Miracle of miracles. The card had been approved. I could leave with my self respect and my groceries. A double triumph.

I came home and immediately checked my bank balance. It's true. I have no money left. I'm not sure where it all went. Perhaps I am a frivolous spendaholic after all. It's not a nice feeling being poor. I can see that my tinned carrots are going to come in handy after all, because once we've munched our way through this lot of food, that's it, we're reverting to WW2 rationing.