A sewage works can seem beautiful

DERBLUH-VAY-SAY. Part two. Why did my wife recommend I pay any price to have our French house connected to the main drains? (see Where there's muck there's mind expansion, May 12). In retrospect, the alternative hardly bears thinking about.

Access to the septic tank was via a trapdoor in the bathroom floor. The moment when the concreted cavity reached capacity was unmistakable. Time to contact the emptyist.

He arrived by tractor towing a large barrel on wheels. In turning into the adjacent alley the trailer brushed against the corner of our house causing a vent at the end of the barrel to open. Unspeakably.

A hose had to be passed through the bathroom window but was too wide for the protective bars. Why not, I suggested, widen the bars with the thingummyjig for raising a car? The emptyist's eyes widened. "Ah, un clic!" Which was a first for me.

The bars were bent slightly and the hose lowered into the unspeakability. A pump started up on the tractor. In the bathroom the emptyist's father, staring avidly, watched the level drop, reciting "Impeccable. Impeccable." - each syllable separated as if it were part of a liturgy. My wife was at this time wandering through fields probably a kilometre away.

The connection fee to the sewers was the predicted £2000. Neither of us complained.

The cost of instant pictures

No such thing as a free lunch, no such thing as an unpaid-for leap forward in technology. A digital camera removes that delay between "Click." and "Ahhh." but the price is a niggling awareness of battery inadequacy. I mentioned this to a photographer working for the local newspaper and he pointed to a lumpish box attached in some way or other to his Nikon. Even this awkward device supplied juice for no more than a day.

Yes, I scrupulously avoid long periods of screen viewing and always carry re-charged batteries. And always curse when the camera goes dead a nano-second after the Low Battery warning. Any tips?

And yet, and yet... What would a blog or a website be without pictures? In colour too!* My experience of publishing dates back to when including a colour pic on an editorial page demanded an appointment with the company accountant. Nowadays there are blogs where colour photographs outstrip the text. Which reminds me of a different way of interpreting the cliché "A picture is worth...": a picture can exclude a thousand words. Frequently, a good thing too.

* Though not here. The only colour images on my outdated clipart disc are only too obviously optical cameras.