The Tale of The Tap - or how not to spend your anniversary

There are better ways to celebrate a wedding anniversary.

When we got married, we hadnt thought about the principles of anniversaries. As my colleague put it to my husband, "It's like a whole other valentines day, mate".

Not that I expect ubiquitous hegemonic excuses for romance.

However, I do not expect a five hour intensive course in amateur plumbing either!

Kitchen tap was leaking. A glance told us our enormous porcelain art-class sink wouldnt be coming out.

Much googling, we discovered our tap is called a "monobloc" mixer with two feeds... no, really.

We then discovered how to take it apart. But our spanner wasnt big enough (not normally a problem).

So, we called a friend, who brought over a spanner and washers. However, his spanner didnt fit either.

After a cup of tea, we decided to drive 9 miles to see my father.

We arrived on the farm and Dad began searching through his stable for the various wrenches he had.

As he was doing this, I noticed his male stud llama having an altercation with a yearling foal. The foal bit the llama's ear and the llama leapt over the fence into the sandschool. The yearling bolted, chased rigorously by the seething llama. I could only wish I had a video camera at that precise point. So we separated the llama and the foal, and put all of the horses into the field.

However, in the mean time the llama jumped back into the sand school and started chatting up the lady llamas in the next field. As Dad and husband searched the stable, one of the female llamas leapt over a hedge and into the gap between the sandschool and the hedge.

We had to stop our search, get help and it took seven people to trap the young flirty female llama and keep her away from the randy stud llama, and keep the horses away as well.

To add to the surreal, my younger sister was doing this in a bridesmaids dress she was getting fitted.

Finally we got an enormous adjustable wrench, some more washers and a strange contraption for something else. It looked like a metal actualisation of Hebrew, but apparently it would be useful.

Once home, it only took forty minutes to get the washer changed.

But yes, a surreal first wedding anniversary.