We've just had to call Sam the Plumber, our knight in shining overalls, to put an electric eel down a blocked pipe to the septic tank. It was all over and done with in twenty minutes. "Normally it's $200 plus GST, but let's call it $150 cash", he said. Maybe I should've become a plumber.
Still, it's cheaper than what some of the neighbours up the lane have to pay. They're on those new Council Regulation pump-outs which require constant servicing because, being on small blocks with no room for absorption trenches, they keep overflowing every few weeks.
And it's certainly cheaper than sewered town allotments which get charged close to a thousand dollars extra in their annual rates for having it piped away.
Shit happens! And when it does, you hold your nose and pay up.
P.S. I am fully aware that many of my elderly readers are trying to catch up on what they had missed out on for most of their lives, i.e. a proper education, and so I always weave a bit of extra knowledge into my blog entries. Today's lesson is about the term "loo" which came from the use of the chamber pot, a very important toilet accessory for many centuries. The pot was often emptied into the street at night. As a fair warning to passing pedestrians, those above would cry out, "Gardyloo!", a corruption of "Gardez l'eau!" (which is French for "Look out for water!"). An another interesting fact about chamber pots is that they sometimes had a picture of an unpopular person in the target area. For a while, Napoleon's face was a favourite in English chamber pots. I think we ought to re-instate this practice but instead of Napoleon use pictures of our politicians (actually, someone in the U.K. did just that - click here - and he did the same with ashtrays and dartboards).
