Boss Radio

"The toilet's backed up."

It's something that happens once every couple of years. Probably something to do with the ancient plumbing here. The answer's always been pretty simple, just pour soda crystals or bleach down it, then go back downstairs and brew up a bucket of boiling hot water and pour it down the pan from a great height. This is usually followed by a slurpy sound and the backup disappears down the tube it was supposed to vanish down in the first place.

Not this time.

I think maybe I was a little impatient, a little too cocky, the plan went wrong somewhere. I did the soda crystals bit, went down and started boiling the water, but it was taking so long I just figured it was hot enough and took it upstairs. The water level hadn't gone down very much, the crystals probably hadn't had long enough to work, but I pressed on. Except, that because the water level was still pretty high I didn't pour the water with quite the same abandon, and all it did was to top up the water level a bit lot.

The crystals were all used up, but fortunately I'd just bought a two litre bottle of bleach. Ten minutes later I'd poured three quarters of it down the loo and it was frothing away like a little water demon ravaging everything in sight, including I expect, the remains of the soda crystals. We went to bed that night with the bleach still thrashing away and just a slight suspicion that we might wake up in the night needing a pee.

The night passed uneventfully but I certain woke up next morning with a desire to pass wetness, probably because I knew deep down inside that the water level wouldn't have gone down.

Actually it had. It had gone down maybe an inch. Just enough room for a carefully placed number one. The bleach was still at it, I think I may have overdone it a bit. Whatever else happened this was going to be the world's cleanest ever toilet. Mr. Crapper would have been proud.

After breakfast we went out to buy some kind of bigass flexible loobrush at the local B&Q, which we happened to know had a nice big, clean toilet facility (Just in case). After walking around for about a quarter of an hour we decided to ask someone for assistance, naturally all the smiling "Hello, how are you?" people who were walking around when we arrived had disappeared, but we eventually found ourselves someone who wanted to be doing something else who told us he didn't think they had anything, but if this would be of any use?...

'This' was a twirly thing on a flexible tube with a knob to do the twirling on top. It was for cleaning out sinks. We looked for something more suitable, I found a sweep's brush and a drain-cleaning outfit, neither of which were flexible enough to get around our S-bend. Then mum said "what's this?"

This 'this' was a 6 foot spring suitable for... something and cleaning sinks. Someone had gone right through the rack obliterating whatever the first thing it was intended for with a big black marker pen. A careful scrute of the wording revealed the words 'lavatories and' were the missing links. We bought it and the twirly thing and went off to get something to eat at a place where we knew they too had a nice big, clean toilet facility.

When we got home the bleach had finally given up trying to find things to exterminate. I pushed the twirly thing down the hole and turned the handle. The whole magilla twirled. I don't know why, but I had thought that the twirly bit ran through the cable and came out at the brush end, but no, the whole damn thing was thrashing around down there, unless I could get it down that S-bend it was useless.

So I tried the spring thing, and quickly realised why it was of no use for clearing toilets. It went into the bend then doubled back on itself, it too was useless unless I could get it right into the bend. I rolled up my sleeve...

To be honest that was probably the cleanest water you ever saw in a toilet, the bleach had annihilated everything it could lay a molecule on, the only thing even remotely brown was the froth which it couldn't get at, but it wasn't dead yet, the second I put my hand in that bowl it was after me like a sack of... those things that are even worse than piranhas.

Oh, I didn't feel it eating me away, but I knew it was, when you're sensitive like me you just know these things. I shoved the pretty little brush thing up the bend and suddenly there was a gloop and the water rushed down the pipe in such a hurry it almost took my fingernails with it. And then how would I play the guitar?

I pulled my arm out of the cleanest toilet I ever saw but that wasn't good enough for me. I scrubbed the arm from shoulder to remaining fingernails with hot water and expensive hand wash, then soap, then I went downstairs and smothered it in hand sanitizer (You know the stuff, the medicated goo that you squeeze onto your hands on the way in and out of the hospital). I am aware of the fact that hand sanitizer is aimed at killing bugs, but somewhere in my mind I had the idea that the bleach, the sanitizer, or maybe both of them, would recognise the other as an enemy and they'd leave my skin alone and fight it out between them.

A day later and I've now gotten over it and both my arms feel the same again except that my LH fingernails are just so much cleaner than my RH nails. I have been down the S-bend and survived. I feel like a slider who got home again. And best of all, I've told the whole story without a single 'Flushed with success' pun....

It's very nearly impossible to find figures you can compare with each other when you're trying to find out who gives what to political parties and/or causes, but from what I can gather "Trades Unions" donate something over 90% of the Labour party's funds, and "The Banks" donate somewhere between 50.4% and 50.7% to the Conservative coffers.

However, in real cash term this works out at around £8.8 million moving from the unions to Labour, and £11.4 million going to the Tories from the banks.

Newspapers like the Daily Mails and Expresses are outraged at the amount of money being given to the Labour party by the Unions. They want to know what the unions think they're going to get for all this dosh. For some reason they're not similarly concerned about what the banks are paying even more for.

Hmmm. Let me think.

Trades Unions are democratically elected organisations bound by regulations to represent the views and concerns of their members, the people who actually do the work, and the banks are capitalist institutions who were deregulated by the Thatcher government (Regulations which would normally have been reinstituted by the following Labour government. One more difference between old and new Labour I guess...) which resulted in the banks' collapse and the world depression which followed.

Well at least now we know why the coalition keep trying to blame the crash on the Labour Party.

So there I was, working on dismantling the shed from the previous blog, and it started to get hot, so I took off my white padded jacket, went into the kitchen, and hung it on the upright vacuum cleaner that just happened to be, conveniently, standing there. Then I went to the bottom of the stairs where we keep the coats, and where, had I been thinking straight, I would have brought the coat, and I pulled out my 'Harry's Band' sunhat. It too is nice and bright white, all the better to reflect the sun, my son.

Hours later and the job was done, I went back inside and hung the sunhat over the upright vacuum cleaner which had remained obediently in the place where I left it, made myself and my mother a nice hot cup of tea, and sat down to relax for a moment or ten.

Now. Let me explain the basic layout of our house. It's very old, and the oldest part was originally just two bedrooms, two living rooms, a connecting staircase, and a toilet at the bottom of the garden.

To get to the toilet you went out through the back door which is now the door into the kitchen. The original door is still in place, and it has windows in it.

Thus it was that, drowsy after my all too brief rest, I stood up and exclaimed "What the hell is that snowman doing in the kitchen?"

Startled, mum looked up, and I, realising my mistake, pretended it was a joke.

Now you know better.

I'm getting more than a little issed poff by politicians telling me there is no alternative to the cuts because we have a really really bad debt situation. It's not that bad. Really bad is Ireland, or Iceland, Greece, Spain, Portugal... I'm thinking Japan's problems maybe consist of something containing the words 'really bad'. We're just a wealthy country that owes a lot of money because it stupidly rescued a load of banks that would have been better off left to go broke.

Of course the problem with that is that innocent people like us, and me in particular, have money invested in them. There used to be a safe bank owned by us, via the government, but Thatcher privatised it, leaving us with no choice but to trust the market. She also deregulated the banks which is why they were able to get into the mess in the first place. Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?

So now there the coalition are, telling me that there's no alternative, invariably followed by their assessment of what Labour would have done, had they remained in power, so my question is this...

If Labour wouldn't have done the same thing as the government is doing, doesn't that make it an alternative?

Bank notified me that my credit card may have been compromised.
Bank sends me a new credit card.
I forget to notify all those using my credit card for standing orders of the new card details.
'Phone bill arrives. Over a hundred quid. I pay it online, late as usual.
A lot of snow falls.
My 'phone line goes down.
The following day I receive a letter delayed by snow and Christmas post saying that my 'phone will be disconnected because I haven't paid my 'phone bill of eleven quid.
No 'phone and therefore no internet, so I write via paper mail which will doubtless be delayed by snow and Christmas.
New year sales, think I'll buy myself a mi-fi/mo-fi unit. Get turned down because my credit rating is crap.
With no word of warning the telephone comes on again, but still no internet.
Can't find any good reason for the internet not to work, try to contact my ISP. None of their numbers work.
Go to a wi-fi hotspot and discover that my ISP has changed hands. Pick a freephone number and call it.
They hadn't received my monthly sub due to credit card thingie mentioned above.
They emailed me, but I didn't reply.
So they tried to telephone me, but the line was dead.
They assumed that I had done a midnight flit and closed my account. On the same day that the 'phone line was reactivated...
Gave them my new details, got the account reactivated. It still wouldn't work.
Checked everything again. Replaced a few cables here and there, rebooted and reprogrammed the router from scratch.
Finally admitted defeat and telephoned the ISP again. Received a message that they had had an "Outage" and would everyone please turn off their modem and/or router for half an hour then reboot.
Hi.
I'm back.