This morning, I turned on the taps to fill the bath while I brushed my teeth. Suddenly, I heard a gurgling sound. I looked down and the bath plug had leapt from its moorings. Quickly, I pushed it back into the hole, and returned to my teeth.
I heard the gurgle again. The plug was out, and water was pushing up like a small geyser. Fearful I would lose all the hot water in bath, once again I pressed the plug back into the hole, but once again it sprung out.
Ah! I thought, perhaps the cold water from the basin tap is causing some pressure to build up. I turned off the tap, and bath plug stayed safely in place. All was well. Until, that is, I went to empty the bath and no water drained out.
I phoned Jeanette.
“Have you had a bath today?”
“A bath? No. Why?”
“Or filled your basin? Or had a shower?”
“No ... I’m still in bed.”
“Well, I think we have frozen pipes,” and I explained my plight.
“I’ll call Gordon. And Eric.”
Gordon it transpired was on a train to Ikea and uncontactable.
“Eric’s away down to Dundee just now, but he thinks it’s the outside pipe. He said not to pour boiling water on the pipes as they might crack, but to pour boiling water down the basin,” said Jeanette.
Two kettlefuls of boiling water and the bath water has not shifted.
Ian from next door is roused from his sick bed to find plungers. Together with his son, they dig out the sewer plates from under the snow, and a long discussion ensues whilst snow begins to fall.
“Aye, it could be the kitchen pipe. “
“Or the bathroom pipe.”
“On mebbe something stuck down the drain.”
I am sent inside to run hot water down the kitchen sink. It pours out of the outside drain. The men establish that it must be the top of the pipe that is frozen.
“Its nay frozen before, and its bin colder than this.” They shake their heads uncomprehendingly.
Eric, my saviour, in whom I have utmost faith to fix anything, will be home from Dundee this evening. He will be co-opted to take apart the U-bend. Meanwhile, the snow is falling quite heavily as we continue to stand around in the garden debating what has caused the blockage.
Jeanette is still in her pyjamas, with her coat thrown over the top, looking cold and miserable, so I persuade her to come to the village shop for a coffee to warm up.
Jean is there.
“Have you fixed your water problem?” she asks me.
I am gobsmacked.
“Omigod, it only just happened – how did you know about it already?” I ask, stupefied. Word sure does travel fast in this neck of the woods. She just grins knowingly at me.
As we drink our coffee, it occurs to me that I have brought the snow, had my mortice lock jam and now got frozen pipes. I am bad luck, I say.
“Och nae,” says Jean. “Bad things always come in threes.”
Back in the cottage, we find a bottle of highly toxic drain fluid and tip it down the basin.
Ronnie from the end cottage comes to inspect the problem.
“Aye, look at the ice doon your wall,” he says.
“That’s the problem.”
Or it might be the solution – Jeanette and I are not quite sure. He advises that we leave the drain fluid as long as possible before flushing it out with hot water. Or we could put a spoonful of sulphuric acid down the sink, but that sounds a bit drastic and dangerous, especially as Ronnie impresses on us that we would have to flush it outstraightaway to stop the pipes corroding.
Ronnie pops home and drops me back a sink plunger. The snow is now a blizzard.
Gordon phones. He is worried about the ice that is forming on the outside wall. I am told to keep checking my dining room ceiling for water leaks. If I see any, we are to panic and go on red alert.
I turn on the hot tap to see if the drain cleaner has worked. All that happens is dirty brown water gurgles up into the bath, turning it a nasty shade of orange. Jeanette says she will phone Johnnie to see if he has any bright ideas. The whole village is being mobilised, it seems.
Eric arrives. He has just been to Dundee to buy a car for his grandson. The roads are terrible, he says. Cars skidding around on the ice and broken down everywhere, banked up against the snow. His wife is at work and won’t be able to get home tonight, he says.
He eyes the ice on the pipe.
“It’s blocked,” he says and takes Ronnie’s plunger to the bathroom. I go to make him a cup of tea while he valiantly plunges the bathtub and basin. The water does not go down.
He decides to go and get his heat gun so he can warm up the pipe and melt that stubborn tract of ice which he thinks is the cause of all this mischief. He stands outside, gloveless, arms upstretched with his gun trained onto the pipe, with an occasional sip of tea to keep him warm.
Then we hear it – a sound that is like nectar to our ears (in my excitement, forgive the mixed metaphor) – a rumbling, spluttering gush of water sloshing down the pipes, magnificent and glorious.
Eric, my hero, has saved the day again!
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