When I'm feeling gloomy, there is nothing that cheers me up more than a quick sit down with a video of my drains and a cup of tea. The way the camera swoops through the murky effluent! The strange hooks and corners that exist in the Edwardian gloom! The fact that my drain is designed in a way that Drain Experts do not Believe, despite video evidence!
Oh, the conversations I've had with Lambeth Council and Thames Water. "Don't be stupid, love, drains don't work like that." "Would you like to see Documentary Evidence, love?" "Don't patronise me, love." The phone calls, the pumping machines, the feet upon feet of high-power jet running through my flat!
There was a first Inkling that all is not well in the Edwardian depths on Thursday. Next door's front garden smelt of plop, and flushing was not all it should be. I looked at it, the loo, and went to bed hoping, in a Pollyannaish way, that in the morning the Poo Fairies would have been and cleared the drain out. But no. For this morning - two days of Hope and small sacrifices to the Poo Fairies later - it is Backing Up, and that means only one thing: I must get my rods out.
Let me explain. I live in the middle of a terrace. The poo from 3 houses down and upstairs joins the Main Drain in my garden, but has to go through a Mysterious Bend first. The Victorians did not get through a roll of loo roll a day; nor did they eat rice and pasta that was shoved down their kitchen sink if it fell out of a sieve. They did not use 'sanitary protection' (other than a rolled up copy of the London Times) and, as they were smaller than us, I suspect their poos were smaller. Likewise, the Edwardians (whose drains were built to join in with the big Victorian one), did not take it upon themselves to throw Flash wipes down the lav. I suspect they also chewed their peas properly, rather than inhaling them whole and then pooing them out into my drain.
I had no choice. I have - for reasons I do not remember - got some long bendy drain rods in my garden. If I rod the Effluent, it usually clears and there is no reason to call the Emergency Poo Services. But today all is not well. There is a new and very heavy manhole cover on the drain, which I finally lifted with the aid of a fork. And more poo (including rice and peas) floating on the surface than I have ever seen before. But rod it I must, and did. Nothing happened, apart from me inserting the full 8ft length of rod into the hole and twiddling it about for a full ten minutes.
And then, of course, I had to TOUCH IT, the rod. I touched Twatboy-Upstairs poo, with my hands. And all to no avail. Now I am going to bath in bleach and scrub myself with sandpaper.
Holy shit, indeed.
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32 comments:
Thankyou for putting me off my cheese and ham sandwiches.
Jesus. You can eat and read at the same time? That's incredible.
This is exactly what killed Prince Albert.
(not cheese & ham sandwiches. that was Mama Cass.)
Sympathies. Exactly this happened to me last Spring. Bad smell then poo coming up into my downstairs bath. Actual poo. We rang and Laurel and Hardy came round with a hi-tech bin lorry/barrel-organ, all pipes, cameras, suckers and blowers. So get them in.
Or ask MonkeyMother - she'll know what to do..
Monkeymother says call out Thames Water. It's a shared drain so they'll do it for nothing. This comes from bitter experience. I too have my own rods but you have to know when you are defeated, n'est-ce pas?
By rods do you mean augers/"snakes" as we call them here? A reel of strong spiraled thick gauge metal wire? MM is totally correct (as usual) don't mess with the problem-call professional-NOW. As my mom would say, you don't need to put up with all that crap.
Rather than crawling in and doing it with my hands, I will indeed call Thames Water. As I have in the past. About fifteen times. Except THIS TIME it's next door. Hoorah!
I hate the word poo as it's childish and faecal, but your constant referrals to poo and Poo Fairies make me want to read more poo, plus repeating it frequently renders it powerless, like Noel Edmonds.
I don't know what that means.
I wanted to blog photos of my drains, but I didn't I would have an audience - each time they were videoed the embarrassment of seeing my poo lessened, until I was convinced other people would find my unusual (1920's) drain configuration as fasinating as I did..... it's like a lot of life experiences, until it happens to you it just isin't interesting, but once it does.........
I hate the words poo and plop too. I hate anything that is a bit euphemistic, like 'going to powder your nose'. But somehow shouting 'OH MY GOD I TOUCHED TWATBOY'S POO' is funner than 'OH MY GOD I TOUCHED TWATBOY'S SHIT'. Do you see? do you?
Gigibird. Hello and welcome. I for one would find it very interesting. Perhaps we could swap?
i love the word poo.
i was going to post something about farts today, but now I've been out plopped. It'll have to wait a few weeks.
did twatboy's poo have a label on it?
cfugq
Of course I see, but then I'm your Mother, so I would.
Your Granny (not my own dear M, thank God) used to refer to "spending a penny"* even when in other people's houses.
*This reference will probably be lost on anyone under the age of 35.
"Rodding the Effluent !" I love it - Rod it baby, rod it !!!
...visions of intrepid plumbermonkey in overalls surfing the Big KaPOOna into the sunset...
Lucy - Twatboy's poo was Mixed In. I do not poo, so I had none in there.
J-boy -yeah baby, yeah! You wanna see pics? They're Hot.
I am ACTUALLY WITH MONKEYMOTHER AT THIS VERY MOMENT. (We only usually communicate via email.)
She says: "You could tell it was TwatBoy's poo because it wasn't big and fluffy, because it didn't have any fibre in it."
Monkeymother is 56. (Going on 12.)
NOW do you believe that there are two of us?
Obviously, I would not have revealed my age to the World.
No Christmas presents for her then.
monkeymother, what a youthful mother you are! and so beautiful. and wise. and clever. and sane. and witty.
now, will you please buy her butterscotch and biggaypeepeemanthing?
MM is only a tiny bit older than me!
"Rodding the effluent" sounds like a euphemism to me!!
And Mikey, mama cass (as you well know) didn;t choke on a sandwich. You've been reading (or possibly even writing) those damn pop culture books again.
l??? That was meant to be L.
What is with lower casery???? I am L. I am not l.!!!! I am shocked. Nay, mortified.
dirty monkey
Your drains may need a drain machine to scrape off - no, not that - scrape off the calcification that has built up over the past 100 years and which reduces the "bore" of the drain to about a quarter of what it should be. We had to have our drains scraped; years later, we discovered that the drain machine was probably the reason that our Victorian drains were now cracked in three places, leaking, causing subsidence, which cost about £13,000 to put right (paid for, luckily, by The Insurance).
Surely, Thames Water don't come for nothing when it is on your property. They certainly don't here. Every six months, they put a terrifying flyer through the door, with a diagram of the drain on it illustrating which bits they will fix and which bits will cost you an arm and a leg to fix - unless you take out drain insurance with Thames Water.
By the way, does the drain run under your property to join the main sewer under the street? That's a Victorian arrangement. Next door to where I live the drain runs under the property, it is cracked, they can't afford to fix it, and the house is collapsing into the drain.
Dear indigo, fortunately I have a life time's knowledge of drains (just don't ask), and so does NWM - now.
Let me reassure you that If you have a "shared drain" on or under your property, your water company is obliged to fix it if it blocks or breaks.
I'd put a bucket of it up on Twatboy's doorstep.
I cleared my friend N's, and it was the sweetcorn that got me, and germinated barley, where the hell that came from God knows. She's got shared drains, but not with a distillery!
A Shittypooeycrappyhorrid job.
I award you a medal, with rod and bar.
Why can't we be as clever and efficient as the Victorians, or does that require putting boys up chimchimnnies again?
Yours Dick Van Dyke
L, "I', whatever it is - please addess your concerns to Blogger.
As to the rest. Thames Water and Lambeth are coming on Monday. I thought I'd get both in, just for a laugh.
And no, I've never paid any money to either, other than a) my council tax and b) my water rates. And that's QUITE enough, frankly.
And anyway, I think my drains are insured, as is everything else I own (even my haircut, which is identical to that of the lead singer of The Feeling).
Dick - this was extremely generous of you. I would only clear someone's drains if I were very much in love with them and they had lost the use of their own arms, either permanently or temporarily.
Yes/ I was aware of the apocryphal nature of my comment. At least I restrained myself from a Prince Albert gag.
Anything to distract myself from the newly minted Urban Legend of the Salisbury Soiler™ which I am Saving for a Special Occasion.
Apprentice -why did I call you Dick? Because someone was shouting it when I wrote the comment. Long story. Apologies. Just noticed.
MM, Let me reassure you that If you have a "shared drain" on or under your property, your water company is obliged to fix it if it blocks or breaks.
MM - this is what I love about the web - your words released into the ether may save my neighbour's sanity, when I tell him. Actually, his Thai wife is more sensible than he is (and more practical about health matters that affect their little girl), so I'll tell her.
MM, I kid not: I believe that several households in sunny Greenwich may thank you for mentioning that *before* we all have poo coming up in the bath.
I suspect that if you have poo coming up in the bath you could advertise it as some kind of new age treatment and make money. But probably only if you lived in one of the trendy parts of London and being from North Britain I have no idea which those are. Greenwich may indeed be one of them.
Oh God, I want to lie down. I think its Schedule 24 of the Public Health Act 1937 - I'm sure you'll find it if you Google. I think, generally, this only applies to properties pre-1937 unless specified otherwise, in a lease for instance.
N.B. I am not a practising lawyer.
P.S. I am going to bed tonight and France tomorrow, so enough with the drains already.
i wonder how french drains are?
just monkeyfather and mother were off to their french house... monkeymother seems to be a drain expert. so it was a pointed wondering. is all. :)
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