was seemingly a writer who liked the use of the word “antediluvian”. I also like this word. Today the torrential downpours across the UK flooded my workplace - my office was an inch deep (2.5cm for those non-imperialists) in rainwater. I got soaked. And I didn’t have a change of clothes, so my feet were decidedly wrinkly by the time I got home and took my shoes and socks off some 7 hours after getting wet. This is the second time this week I have been covered in water of questionable purity.
On Wednesday my neighbour beneath came up to ask whether there was a leak in the kitchen. “No, I don’t think so.” I replied. “I’ll go and take a look”. Fatal mistake.
Beneath the sink four inlets (two plugholes, a washing machine and a dishwasher) all meet in a kind of Spaghetti Junction of white and grey piping). I hadn’t used the dishwasher or washing machine, so I thought it must be the sink(s). I took everything out of the cupboard - why do the British insist on storing the most random things beneath the kitchen sink (paintbrushes, putty, flower pots…) I saw there was some water marking, but this may have been from previous floods with the previous tenants. Then I saw it, a small drip every couple of seconds. OK, I thought. As I’m here, I’ll undo the pipes, give them a rinse in some hot water and put them back together - tighten the dripping one and we’ll all be happy as Larry. Fatal mistake number 2.
As I began to unscrew the dripping joint, it rose to become a veritable arc of slightly dirty water. Fortunately I had placed a bowl beneath the plumbing, so I continued, logically assuming that as the pressure dropped, so the water would gently drain into the bowl. Fatal error number three.
The pressure did drop, but the brown water now poured everywhere. And as I sought to stem the flow, so random jets would build up and shoot out at all angles between my fingers. So I now have a bowl full of dark brown water, a cupboard covered in drops of dark brown water. And me, covered in drops of dark brown water. Fun.
So, one bowl full of water later, and it stops. I can remove the pipe, take out the festering filth that has built up to cause the blockage, clean it, and put it all back together. Only this last part doesn’t quite work. One of the pipes no longer seems ot fit, and drips as water comes down from the sink. So I unscrew it and take a look. And the seal has gone. Which was most likely part of the problem to begin with. So I head down to the local hardware store (yes, we still have one - no Homebase or B&Q here, thank you), get a seal (or should that be washer) and put it all back together.
And so far it has been OK. Touch wood.
Thanks and apologies to Mikhail Zoshchenko.
Darling, you’re turning awfully butch now that you’re in your 30s. Mind you, the Russian plumbs things in in what, to me, always seems a rather ad-hoc, Soviet fashion. But so far so good. Apart from the neighbour we flooded downstairs when he had an especially zealous cleaning fit.
I’m not even sure where I get it from - it must be latent knowledge from my childhood, when my mother would refuse to pay for tradesmen, and instead employ my father in fixing whatever it was.