Drains ... strikes fear into every householder and today I can safely say with a degree of confidence why...to get them flushed / inspected is pretty costly and when drains are shared between householders, the problem of where the problem / blockage has occured, how it occured and who pays for the cost(s) can be problematic....
Yesterday, I cleared with Marcelo all the heavy clay soil around and above the damp course (bridging problems) at the back of the property exposing the very top of the drains. After many hours in pouring rain the work was completed with some mud/clay re-distributed within the garden and some bagged up ready for a trip to the local dump, I was ready to clear up and take a hot bath.
Whilst thoughts of a hot bath and the prospect of a good meal were running through my head these visions were swiftly wiped away by a knock at the door...our neighbour appeared looking a little puce!!!..he had popped home en route to the dentist to be confronted by a terrible smell of drains wafting through his house....although his wife was home she was impervious to the wretched stenk!!!
I was, naturally, panic-stricken worrying we had accidently fractured the drains so spent some time ringing round for an emergency drain clearance/repair service - the costs really varied and the best emergency service I could get was one which charged on a time basis in units of half hours and correspondingly charged for flushing on a time-basis (power flushing). A very nice drain-flusher (!!!) arrived and began his investigation...in the midst of this (loud banging flushing machine, terrible smells, me and Marcello covered in mud/clay and other smelly stuff!) my girlfriend made an unexpected arrival - she had come home from work early as she had a terrible migraine - she took one look at the chaos, said something (which I couldn't hear) to Marcello - who looked somewhat afraid (not an unusual experience for those facing the displeasure of my girlfriend) and went upstairs to bed - sleeping through the remainder of the drain cleansing fiasco.
It transpired that our drain was (relatively speaking) clean and well and unfortunately our neighbour was, by sheer coincidence, suffering from a blockage (in his drains....not personally!) caused by a neighbour further up the street. In fact, our drains and those of our neighbour are unconnected. So all's well that end's well....although cleaning of clothes/house that evening was, I understand from my other half, not a very pleasant task....but by that point I was in the bath I had been dreaming of and awaiting a sumptuous feast!
