The Ley Lines of a SemiRetired Drainage System

There seems to be at times, a fine line between enthusiasm and frenzied delight, and with Miranda Krestovnikoff, who presents BBC 2's Hidden Treasure, that line is all too frequently blurred.

Still, perhaps I'm being a little too hard on the poor girl. After all, it's her enthusiasm that caused me to go out the other day and buy a metal detector. I'd like to think that I'm the only one to have done this, at least in my town, but regrettably, I suspect I'm in the majority?

After all, I went into one of the local shops on the day of purchase, asking if they did indeed sell metal detectors, and this young man serving behind the counter immediately asked if I'd been watching BBC 2 recently. I didn't know how to take this.

Now obviously, he'd sussed me but ? well, was that good manners on his part, or just cheeky perception?

I mean, had I gone into my local branch of M & S and been caught perusing the boxer shorts, I think I'd have taken umbrage, had a shop assistant inquired if I'd recently had a case of the runs. I digress. Suffice to say, I felt uncomfortable, embarrassed, found out, with my BBC 2 viewing detected so instantly.

Anyway, my fiancée and I finally located one of these machines in one of the nearby catalogue stores?which meant that once we had got it home, we needed to drive off out to one of the nearby catalogue stores to buy some batteries, amidst much muttering.

Still, once this thing was up and running, the fun we had around the house was fantastic.

The brass fireplace was indeed metal, so was a 2p casually dropped on the carpet, then hunted down, with much squealing from both man and machine.

And then there was the garden of course. I expertly discovered the ley lines that relate to the drainage system. This should have been done privately.

However, we live in a quiet, semi-retired, semi-detached area, and my tracking the drainage caused the district net curtains to act as if there was a tornado approaching.

We rent the house we currently live in and our landlord is slow when it comes to getting things done, so, in a way, the metal detector really came into its own when I decided to phone our landlord. There's a ladder on our roof that has been there all year and it's been annoying me, so I thought I'd have him on toast.

The phone call went like this.

"Hello, Bob, it's Holmes here. I bought a metal detector today and discovered there's a ladder on the roof. This could attract burglars, surely."

There was such a pause at the other end of the line.

I could hear confused steam coming from his ears as he got this mental image of my scaling the house with a metal detector.

The ladder is still there. All that's changed is the landlord now seems incredibly wary of me when he collects the rent each month?

Now, where did I put the washing machine?

© Copyright Holmes Charnley mmiv. All rights reserved.

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About the Author .Freelance Journalist based in Devon-UK. For more examples of my work, please visit http://www.

articles.me.uk. The two most recent pieces have been published in The Guardian (UK broadsheet.) Pieces also accepted by Jack magazine.

By: Pem Charnley