Utilities Friday

I woke enthused with that Friday feeling and sufficiently demented by the sound of continual dripping and gurgling from the bathroom to propel me into a pyjama-clad investigation of the toilet cistern. This of course meant that I first had to clear away everyday essentials from the lid, including a collection of rather attractive seashells, three odd earrings and a partly completed ‘buy 6 coffees get one free’ offer ticket from McDonalds.

The cistern lid was also, I have to confess, rather dusty. In general, I like to think that the thin layer of dust acts as a kind of secondary defence mechanism against intrusion by burglars. Should a ne’er-do-well manage to slip past the dog by the cunning distractive application of a fine rump steak, his incriminating traces would in any event be captured if he were to foolishly place his hand upon almost any surface. Including, as it turns out, in the bathroom. Although how dust manages to accumulate in a tiny room the size of a rug is a mystery beyond my comprehension.

I am not entirely un-used to the secret inner workings of the low-level flush having been party to the installation of several loos when the ex and I were converting the barn. However, I had not previously investigated this one and so removed the white ceramic lid with great care as one might conduct an experiment with radioactive rods in the confines of a miniature nuclear reactor; you don’t think anything will go wrong if you drop it, but probably best not to risk it lest you disappear into a great melt-down hole of your own creation and pop out wearing rubber gloves and looking startled somewhere in China.

The problem I could see at once. The one-armed floating ball-cock was not rising quite high enough after completion of the flushing cycle to shut off the in-coming water valve. The net result of which was both a continual thin trickle of water into the toilet bowl and the generation of a seed of homicidal lunacy in my brain as it failed to shut out the dripping sound. Lifting up the ball-cock did the trick in terms of stopping the trickle, but I didn’t feel that standing holding it was really a satisfactory answer to either a) how to spend the rest of my life, or b) how to actually fix the problem.

Closer inspection of the valve itself revealed a number of small white plastic screws and nuts. I tightened, I loosened, took one off and put it back again and generally fiddled around until – lo! – there was silence. Water trickled no more. Even when I flushed it three times just to check I wasn’t delusional. Even when I flushed it again, now dressed an hour later, the toilet regained a dignified and reverent hush upon completion of its necessary ablutions.

I was working (in the loosest sense of that word) at my computer a bit later when, with a small pinging sound, the whole thing shut down. The CD-ROM drawer had been spontaneously sliding in and out of the tower unit at random intervals for a few months and so at first I thought that the pc had departed to the great motherboard in the sky. But the disappearance of the green digits from the oven clock and the silence of the washing machine persuaded me that this was, in fact, a good old fashioned power cut.

The electricity was still off a couple of hours later as I walked into the high street to meet my mother for lunch at the Neptune Café. I was feeling peckish and a little bit worried that the power failure would mean the café was closed. Peering through the window from the pavement outside, the café appeared completely dark. But the door opened to my touch and I was greeted by warmth, the chatter of conversation and the smell of good home cooking.

After a morning of trouble with water and electricity, I was relieved to find that the Neptune Café was indeed cooking on gas, even if we dined in the dark.