It had been my intention today to have a solid day of doll dressing, interspersed with telling you all about nineteenth century French Fashion dolls, which may have been responsible for doll mania in the twentieth century, the development of the domestic kiln in America and so much more.
However – oh there’s always a however, isn’t there?
On my way to bed last night, planning today, as I removed the plug from the bathroom basin there was a whoosh and a mighty gurgle, and for lo! The shower tray suddenly filled from the plug hole.
Being a plumber’s grand daughter, I was not phased. I popped downstairs in my shreddies, fetched the plunger and plunged the sink. This had the interesting effect of filling the shower tray further. The OH on his way to bed also had a go with similar results.
Occurrences of this nature are not very sleep inducing. Trying to work out the plumbing system to deduce why a blockage in one place would cause a flood in another, is much less effective as a means of dropping off than counting sheep. So, for the next few hours I plunged the shower drain and then lay in bed and worried. ‘It might go down overnight,’ the OH suggested.
Mmm hmm. So, upon the morrow, up and dressed at crack of dawn, I then started a little worrying about the amount of cash available for such luxuries as plumbers at the end of January.
Subsequently I took myself off to the supermarket to buy the own brand, cheap, drain un-blocker. This is identical to the posh one but half the price. Unable to locate it, I asked an assistant for help. She consulted her phone and came up with the information that all the own brand products in the cleaning isle are being rebranded and will be available for purchase next week. I think the English for this is that they are going to have an increased price and fancier packaging. So I bought two bottles of the stuff that was four quid a bottle – four quid for a small bottle of stuff to literally pour down a drain.
Back at home with the eight quid purchase we could happily have used for, oh I don’t know, food e.g. I was not super happy when the OH, with whom it had been agreed that the best place to pour the liquid gold was down the basin drain, rather than the flooded shower, went and poured the bottle down the shower drain.
This proving expectedly ineffective, a couple of hours later, as the shower flood plain increased in volume, I fetched the dustpan and a bucket and did a bit of baling out. The OH very reluctantly agreed to assist me in levering the manhole cover in the front garden upward sufficiently to see if the blockage was toilets as well. After a bit of toing and froing he operated the spade, I grasped the edge of the cover and he had a squint.
The blessed emptiness possibly indicating the locality of the problem as being confined to the basin/shower interface, was a relief. The OH had an idea. Remembering that the vacuum in his collapsed workshop shed was a wet and dry effort, he fetched it, and after coating the side passage in fluff by brushing the filter with the dustpan brush, brought it upstairs and began suction. Unfortunately he did not see fit to block the hole by which the exhaust is normally joined to the extractor in his shed, prior to filthy water vacuuming.
Therefore the extracted shower water exhausted itself all over the rest of my bathroom especially the magazines I haven’t read yet and the penultimate, before pay day, toilet roll.
Ideal. So when I’d cleared the rest of the bathroom up, the shower tray seeming empty-ish, he squirted the rest of solid gold bottle number two down there.
This was some hours, during which a great deal of worrying and little doll dressing has occurred, ago. Currently the shower tray is still magically filling itself from the drain hole so I doubt there’ll be much sleep tonight. As soon as I’ve checked this I’ll be back in the bathroom, dredging. Then, if the last of my savings has transferred itself from my Christmasly depleted savings account to my take-it-out-and-hand-it-to-the-plumber account, there may be a plumber tomorrow, depending.
I think it is seven weeks to Miniatura, I have six trays of dolls to dress and a kit to design.
But, apparently, I am plumbing.
Flipping typical.
~~~~~~~~~~~~