Hose rage

Yesterday, I bought a hose. £9.99 from Woolworths (only the best for Blue Ghost Towers). And when I got it home it wouldn't attach itself to the outside tap. So today, at lunchtime, I set off on a search for a nozzle-tap-attachment thingy in exotic Teddington, birthplace of Noel Coward (blue plaque in Waldegrave Road, for anybody local), and dwelling place of Benny Hill. Hill afficionados may remember his hit "Ernie", that thoughtful critique of the milk delivery industry, and the mention of "two ton Ted from Teddington".

I went to a DIY shop. It's one of those old fashioned DIY shops where you can actually ask advice, rather than one of those huge warehouses where the staff are all about 10, and earning money before they go to university to study drama, or something, and look more bemused than you are when you ask what size screws you should use to put up a bookshelf.

There was a guy in the way, talking on a mobile phone. I felt a bit pushy asking him to stand aside during what was clearly quite an important discussion. It wasn't one of those fatuous "I'm on the train" calls. Well, obviously not, he wasn't on a train. But it was one of those sudden changes of plan for this afternoon calls which he should have been taking. So, like you do in a shop when you can't progress forward as fast as you would like, I looked around in a browsing sort of fashion. But that's just silly in a DIY shop, because I found myself looking at a display of screws. It's not the sort of thing you would browse, frankly.

Anyway, they didn't have the required hose related item, so I trotted down to Woolworths. Nope. A lot of Finding Nemo DVDs but these would not, I think, prevent my garden from dying.

And so to the garden centre. By this time I am very hot, and resenting the fact that I can't spend my lunch hour munching a sandwich and surfing the web. And there it is, the holy grail! A little rubber and plastic thing about three inches long. For £5.09. Woolworths can sell me an incredibly long hose and about 3 attachments to go on the end, and some things which attach the hose to a tap (well, OK, it didn't work for our tap), all for £9.99, and this little thing costs more than a cheap bottle of wine!!

I don't care. By this point, if I have to pay by collecting and cooking 50 larks tongues, and finding the holy grail, I will have this nozzle-tap-attachment thingy.

Then I get home. And it won't stay on the tap!! The minute the water starts flowing, the pressure forces it off. So I've used No More Nails on it now, getting No More Nails on my black top in the process. Hopefully by the morning it will be firm.

And I go and read Gert's post, so I'm not even being very original blogging about hoses. Grrrr...