Boss Radio

Somewhere before our time in this little abode, a previous occupant performed an act which probably seemed like a giant leap into the next century to him. He moved the Crapper from the end of the garden to the back of the house.

Now when it was raining you only had to run out of the side door, along the side of the house a little way and around the corner about two yards and through the door into the dryness where you could perform a wettie all in your own sweet time. The time was yours, the paper's free, enjoy yourself, there was no fee.

A little further into the future, probably following a major deluge (Of the meteorological kind...) someone (Else?) thought to themselves 'Stuff this for a game of cricket. If it means I remain dry I'm quite prepared to have to run through the house to the stairs, up the stairs, turn left, run through the bedroom, down the steps into the spare room, and through the spare room to get to the dungie' and proceded to install another of Mr. Crapper's inventions in the room overlooking the present clungie.

Being a dual-bog household proved a very satisfactory arrangement during the time when there were 5 of us living in the one house, particularly after I discovered the acoustic properties of the upstairs pooproom and started practicing the guitar in there.

Probably in order to get me out of there, dad decided to convert the outside brickhouse into open space, and not long after that mum decided it would be a good place to build a 'lean to' to store the bicycles in. The guy who did the job decided it would be a good idea to make it out of brick, wood, mortar and glass and did a splendid - if expensive - job of it considering it was just a store room, and when we bought a new freezer we moved the old one into the leanto (As we now referred to it) where it could be used as an overflow for the days when someone (Mentioning no names) got a little carried away with the instant meal element of the shopping.

As time went by we moved more and more stuff into the leanto, and once I'd discovered internet shopping it started to creak at the seams. My latest purchase was a bargain bagful of food for the cat. It was all nicely tinned with plenty of use-by time to go, so I pulled a few tins out and left the rest in the outhouse from where, about once a week, I would remove another batch of food.

This evening I realised that the cat food was once again running low and I groped my way in the gathering gloom to the leanto. As soon as I opened the door the smell hit me, it was just as though it had reverted to its previous incarnation after someone had eaten a particularly bad curry. The closer I got to the cat food the worse the smell got, and it was with some trepidation that I picked up a couple of six-packs. Sure enough, they were dripping with a foul smelling blackish substance. I carried them at arm's length out into the night and fetched a torch.

Typically the plastic holding the tins together was more reluctant then usual to open and I finally had to use scissors, at which point tins fell everywhere, and there it was... Two tins had burst their pull-tops and a mixture of mess and maggots was running out. I laid some paper out just inside the side door and put all the tins down on it so I could see how big the problem was.

Stupid move.

As soon as they saw the light the maggots were on their way. Thousands of them wriggling off in every direction. I grabbed the four corners of the paper and threw it into the waste bin outside, then I ran back in and started scooping up all the ones who'd escaped. I finally decided that I'd got them all and set to checking out the other tins. Several of them had maggots or mounds of baby maggots residing on them so I put them all back outside and washed them all down.

When I came back in the carpet appeared to be moving. I obviously hadn't caught all the maggots yet, some of them must have fallen off the underside of the tins when I picked them up.

I'm now fairly certain I've got every single maggot up, out, and into the bin, although I did toy with the idea of not putting any slug deterent down tonight, just let them in and hunt down any maggs I may have missed, but in the end I sprayed it anyway, and then, at last, washed my hands.

Suddenly I realised what Shakespear was getting at. Out! Out, damned pong! Who'd have thought the six pack could carry so much magg-mess? My hands stank worse than a Chinese wrestler's jockstrap cooked in chicken fat on a sultry day in a whore-house in Rangoon, in fact they smelt like a Chinese wrestler's maggot infested jockstrap cooked in maggot infested chicken fat on a sultry day in a maggot infested whore-house in Rangoon. On a maggot infested day. Even my special odour eliminating handwash was powerless. As I sit here typing I can still smell the stuff on my hands. Go on, take a deep breath, you'll probably smell it too. It's so powerful it could actually be transmitted electronically across the globe, defying all the laws of physics as we know them.

Go on. Take a sniff.

See?

Of all the creatures that might inherit the world after we've made it uninhabitable for us, it sends shivers down my spine to think that maggots will be amongst them.

I tell you. We have to do something about climate change!!

Tea time. Time to make tea. Welsh Rarebit maybe? Or a salad perhaps? Well first things first, put the kettle on.

I go to the kettle, it needs water, kettles are like that, they're thirsty little barbarians. So I take a jug to the water supply because it's easier than unplugging the electric kettle and I fill it from the fresh water tap. The fresh water tap is the one where the water comes direct from the mains rather than from one of the tanks upstairs, both of which are filled from the mains, but it's the principal of the thing.

The water is the wrong colour. It looks sort of milky. With horror I realise that there must have been milk in the jug. Augh, what a waste - I throw it away and refill the jug.

It's still the wrong colour. Its whitewater. I've heard of this stuff, people go rafting in it and have all sorts of merry fun bouncing off rocks and risking their lives for pleasure. I've just never heard if its actually fit to drink.

As I stare at the water it gradually turns transparent. Right. So the sediment settles, that's probably a good thing, now all I have to do is empty the water away, wash the sediment out of the jug, and... wash it out with more white water? I stir it up a bit to see what the sediment actually looks like, but it refuses to be stirred. I empty the water away and try to scrape the sediment out of the jug, but I can't see it, it must be the same colour as the jug.

OK. let's be scientific. I refill the jug and sniff it. I can't smell anything, but that proves nothing, I take it in to mum and ask her to sniff it, she says it smells vaguely medicinal. Oh good grief. Surely the water from the swimming baths up the top of the hill can't have leached into the water supply? One thing's for sure, we're not drinking the stuff. I'm telephoning the water authority.

They're not easy to contact but I find a number and ring it. I'm given a choice of three keys to press. I press what sounds like the right one, and am given another choice, this time of 5 keys to press. This time it's easier, I press 'Other' - I have a choice of 5 more keys I can press. I'm getting impatient now, I'm paying for this call, whatever happened to pools of people answering the telephone and putting you through to whoever you needed to speak to? Another mechanical voice comes on, but fortunately it's interupted by a real person before I have a chance to have a fit.

The guy's already half guessed what I'm calling about, he's had a few calls on the subject all ready so he just takes my details and explains that what's happened is that air has got into the water somehow. It's completely harmless, but will I just do something for him?

I guess so. What?

He wants me to go and fill a glass with water and tell him if it clears from the bottom or the top. Very cunning. If it clears from the top it's sediment, but if it clears from the bottom then whatever it is must be exploding into the air. It clears from the bottom. He says what he needs me to do now is to leave it for a couple of hours while whatever it is works its way out of the water, then if I'd just go and run the water for a few minutes to clear the pipes and everything will be just fine. If I need drinking water before then I should fill a jug and put it in the refrigerator for half an hour and will be perfectly OK to drink.

Whatever happened to 'Completely harmless'?

Still, I'm not too bothered by it. Living in an old cottage we have to 'run the water' to clear the pipes every morning because they don't know what our pipes may be made of so it's best to clear them. As a further preventative measure I therefore bought a couple of filter jugs, which we keep permanently primed. I fill them up. That's nearly a gallon of drinking water once it's filtered. No worries.

Last thing last night I went to clear the pipes as asked, but they didn't clear. Oh well. Let's give it another 8 hours.

This morning the water is every bit as milky as it was yesterday. I left the tap running for over 10 minutes but the milkiness persists. In a moment of inspiration I filled a bottle and watched as the milkiness drifted up into the bottleneck, and sure enough, bubbles started appearing in the neck where they'd been trapped. I knew a lifetime of drinking fizzy stuff wasn't wasted. So there is something in the water, something lighter than water, something that smells vaguely medicinal. Better create some more drinking water then I thought, and filled up a couple of containers with the water from the filter jugs, then I refilled the jugs.

They're both on go-slow. One of them has almost come to a standstill with only half a jug filtered, the other is still filtering, but wa-a-ay slower than usual.

What is in our water???

Maybe it's connected with the explosions I heard the night before.

I must 'phone local radio and tell them that the aliens have landed.

Oh wait...

The aliens work for local radio.