Pump Inaction
‘HOW could it be? The Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, the circle of tears symbolising the gaping chasm her untimely death left in all of our lives, has dried up.
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| ‘Turn off the water, Sid. There’s something stuck in the tunnel’ |
Yesterday, the Mail says, visitors to Hyde Park were greeted with the sight of children playing on the monuments granite slabs instead of splashing around in the water.
And they could only watch as engineers struggled to fix a pump as part of what Theo Moore, spokesman for the Royal Parks, described as routine maintenance.
Routine maintenance?! The £3.6m fountain has only been open officially a week and already it has broken down twice.
Okay, so the first time it overflowed a fitting symbol perhaps of the overpowering grief we all still feel about the demise of the Queen of Hearts.
That was blamed on bad weather, after it became blocked by leaves from heavy summer storms something that no-one would have foreseen in a wooded area of a London park.
But yesterday there was no water at all it was almost as if after a massive outpouring of grief we had all got on with our lives and forgotten about the Princess entirely.
That, of course, couldnt be further from the truth in Anorak Towers, for instance, we remember her every Friday at 4 oclock when we tuck into the fruitcake kindly provided by old Mr Anorak.
However, the Royal Parks informs us (via the Mail) that yesterday was just a temporary glitch.
Mr Moore said the pump has a very fine tolerance and gets disrupted very easily.
We had to take the pump out and do a thorough check on it to make sure it didnt develop into something much more serious, he said (although what could be more serious for a fountain than an absence of water we dont know).
We have found leaves and other debris in it. We presume they were the same leaves that were blown into the system during last weeks storm.
The good news, however, is that the fountain is back up and running.
And, assuming that there is no more unforeseen wind, bad weather or unruly leaves, theres no reason why it should not keep flowing for years to come.’
Posted: 14th, July 2004 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
