Joe Bennett: On the summit of victory after plumbing the depths

The kitchen sink worked fine until this week when it developed a glug. The water still drained but after it had gone there came repeated stethoscopic noises from the pipe. Photo / 123rf

OPINION

It was the pigs’ last stand. But let me begin at the beginning.

I wrote some time ago in praise of plumbers. I called them heroes of the faucet, Lancelots of the leak, and I meant every word. But now I have no choice but to apply those same terms to myself, for I have just fixed my own plumbing. And if you don’t like to hear a man boast, turn the page.

There’s a sink in my garage. For months it has been slow to drain. Water has lingered about the plug. I went at it once with that vaguely obscene rubber dome on a stick, the one that creates a vacuum and sometimes causes a glorious plume of stinking blockage to erupt. But no joy. I even opened the cupboard under the sink and gazed wistfully at the piping, but I knew in my heart it was a u-bend too far. I had neither the tools nor the courage. So I learned to live with a slow-draining sink.

The garage is the ground floor. The house proper, where we eat and sleep and hope to find a sense of purpose, is the floor above. And the sink in the kitchen - a double stainless-steel job - sits more or less above the sink in the garage, no doubt for reasons of plumbing economy.

The kitchen sink worked fine until this week when it developed a glug. The water still drained but after it had gone there came repeated stethoscopic noises from the pipe, as if there were a man down there with chronic wind. It was comic but vexing.

I went at this sink too with the plunger but again without result, so I upped the arsenal to baking soda with a chaser of cheap vinegar. And oh, how my schoolboy soul exulted at the sudden frothing, the activeness of chemistry. We men are arsonists at heart and demolitioners. But when the chemistry had cleared the belcher was still in the pipe, as stertorous as ever.

It struck me only this morning that the two malfunctioning sinks might be related and I went forth to find a common cause. It didn’t take much finding. Against the front of the house there stands a drain into which both sinks empty. It was awash with stagnant, grey and greasy water. Reader, the drain was blocked.

I reached for the waterblaster. It is a cheap domestic model but comes with a magnificent gun like an M16 that can be fired from the hip to clear the mould from every aspect of your life. I rigged it up, thrust the muzzle of the M16 as deep into the drain as it would go and turned it on.

Having put the clothes I’d been wearing into the washing machine, I chose a more considered approach and shoved a speculative length of hosepipe into the grey and greasy. A foot or so down it met what felt like a plastic base. Further wiggling sent it round a bend where it butted feebly up against what I took to be the blockage. Pushing on the hose had no effect. What was needed was a tool that was flexible enough to round the bend, but then could stiffen up and become a prodding rod. Could there be such a tool anywhere on the surface of god’s green earth?

The human arm began life as a fish’s fin but evolved over millions of years into what it is today. I rolled the sleeve of my T shirt to the armpit, lay on my belly on the sodden ground and, with only the briefest pause for thoughts, sank my arm into the grey and greasy. I felt the bottom of the pipe, groped around the corner and met my mortal enemy. It felt waxy, solid.

Holding my arm as far away from me as possible I fetched a chisel from the garage. Down I lay once more, only now my arm was armed. I worked the chisel around the corner then stabbed. The chisel sank into the blockage. I stabbed and stabbed again, felt it begin to give, and then suddenly the grey and greasy chuckled all away. Pieces of blockage still adhered to the wall of the pipe. I pulled a piece up for inspection.

I am partial to pork. And after I’ve cooked a roast or chops or belly, down the sink goes the fat. And here it was again, whitened, congealed, still greasy. It would be wrong to begrudge the pigs their final protest, but to the victor the spoils. I have spent the day turning taps on and watching the water run. It’s a fine life.