The journey back from Niagara was made in some of the worst rain that Canada has seen for many a year. Record rainfall, horrendous storms, some kind of freak tornado. I hardly noticed it as I slept contentedly in a seat at the back of the MPV. I so seldom find myself as a passenger that I couldn't help myself, it was a refreshing change.  Did I feel a little guilty? Not in the slightest! It was pretty late when we turned onto the drive of Shirley and Nick's house, it was also raining VERY hard. The roads and gardens were awash with standing water. Actually, it wasn't standing, it was a torrent ... something like the floods that we were watching on TV happening in England in the previous few days.

We unpacked, had supper, drank beer and wine and whisky, we went to bed. It was still raining and very stormy. I 'woke the next morning with Bev pushing me out of bed telling me to get dressed and to go and help Nick in the basement. The basement was flooded. No shower, no shave, no time to brush teeth, just go and help.

The ground-floor area of the house contains a huge den / utility room, a huge den that serves as a study with the PC and library, and their daughter Lauren’s rooms. It’s HUGE. It was flooded. The house is quite close to Lake Orrilia, the water table is low. Low water tables mean frequent problems with damp, Nick had installed a sump pump, a deep hole with a water pump that kicked in when the hole filled with water. The torrential rain had soaked the land and the water table had risen. The pump had kicked in okay, and had continued to work until it literally burned out. Result? A flooded basement.

We mopped, scooped, swept, took up carpets, moved electrical goods, furniture. Nick called the Insurance Company. Nick and I set about fixing the pump. It was a simple matter to buy a replacement, but I complicated things by asking where the water went when pumped out. Nick showed me. Fifty feet from the house a buried pipe pumped the water to the end of his garden. Even though the pump was working overtime, there was not much sign of any water.  I started digging. Nick had literally just buried the pipework in soil. When it was working �?then stopped, the soil washed back into the pipe and blocked it.  â€œNick, you need a sump with a filter�?says I. Nick and I sit with a coffee and a smoke and plan a most elaborate sump and filter. This fiasco is NEVER going to happen again. Armed with a plan and a design, we head for the local equivalent of a builders merchant.

For an hour and more we collected pipes, U bends, filters, and a huge water tank to contain the gravel. Must have been a couple hundred dollars worth. As a helpful assistant considered our list, he said �?“’Course you could use a re-cycling bin�?$12.00, and a grid filter�?$5.00 �?and half a dozen sacks of gravel�?$3.50 each�?That would do the trick too �?Huh? �?All you’d have to do is drill plenty of holes in the re-cycling bin of course�?