Outside our summer house in Samos the drains are being
renewed with pneumatic drilling, deep trenches have appeared and the
inconvenience is considerable. My thoughts naturally strayed to
matters sanitary. Of all the multifarious services we take for granted in our Western
feather-beds, one of the most overlooked is clean, running, mains water. We
blithely assume the taps (“faucets” for our friends across the Pond) will
deliver clean drinkable water, that our toilets will flush with gratifying
discretion and that the drains (wherever they are) will receive easily the
murky effluent of our indispensable clothes-washing and dishwashing machines,
not to mention loos.
These are reasonable assumptions for about 90% of our time,
but if there is a little snag, be ready for a rude awakening and a highly
alarming train of events. Drain blockages, machine malfunctions or flood
contaminations represent the stuff of nightmares reducing you suddenly from the
21st to at least the 18th century if not the Neolithic
Age. Most Westerners are ill-prepared for this drastic metamorphosis.
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| A blocked drain announces its presence |
Drain blockages (your responsibility, as the water company only cares about the main drain) announce themselves with a penetrating and unmistakable pong and can leave you with horrid clogged sinks. This calls for the services of the Man from Dyno-Rod, an exotic specialist in the unblocking arts, not really a plumber. The Dyno-Rod man will appear in a van lugging a large empty water tank. He fills the tank from the mains with agonising slowness – agonising as he charges you £100 per hour. He fits up his rods with the same absence of alacrity. He sits in his van dragging on a fag (no, not that kind of fag, I mean “a cigarette” for our friends across the Pond). When his water tank is full he will pump water down your drain and energetically manipulate his rods; with any luck after a few minutes there will be a satisfying “plop” and a rush of foul water will disappear towards the main drain. I can see the attraction in being a Dyno-Rod man at such moments despite the lingering pongs – you are much relieved and he is about £300 richer.
A well-working flush toilet is another of life’s little
necessities. The principle of the flush toilet is very ancient – Neolithic
settlements at Skara Brae in the Orkney Isles diverted streams to flush away
effluent in the 31st Century BC to be followed by civilisations in
the Indus Valley. These were public rather than private conveniences and so
they remained for centuries. Tudor inventors perfected the toilet using the
leaky floating valve principle to be replaced in the 1880s by the siphonic system
developed by gloriously named sanitary engineer Thomas Crapper, whose premises
once graced The King’s Road, Chelsea. The S-bend had already been patented
preventing sewer gasses floating upwards and soon in the UK and USA the private
internal loo, not outside in a garden shed, became more common among the
prosperous, sweet-smelling bourgeoisie.
Yet plenty can go wrong with a flush toilet: washers need
replacing, the ball-cock gets punctured and the loo overflows, the flush handle
falls off and the bowl itself harbours all manner of nasties. Here in Greece
one is regaled with stories of soaked rats suddenly appearing – I assume the
fear of flushed-away baby crocodiles growing huge in the New York sewers is
just another lurid urban myth. In Greece the old pipes were too narrow and
could not cope with much toilet paper: you were instructed to place the used
paper in a handy receptacle (Oh, my sainted aunt!).
Another horror, once common in Greece and still widely used
globally, is the “squat” toilet a somewhat uninviting ceramic hole in the
ground with size 12 footprints nearby to explain to the bamboozled Westerner
what he or she has to do – the undignified, unfamiliar and acrobatic squat with
not much to hold onto. Mind you, dignity is never easy in this area of sad
necessity.
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| Flush |
A blocked dish-washing machine will soon flood a kitchen as
they will still pump away regardless. My dear wife always insisted on
extravagant Miele appliances, of
legendary Teutonic efficiency; a legend, alas, they have proved, as most are
now manufactured away from Germany in countries like Slovakia and Hungary and
break down like any others. You get Trabant quality at Rolls-Royce prices! Your
friendly plumber will have to twist pipes with his monkey-wrench as if he were
dealing with a humble Indesit.
Most crucially of all, is the water potable (drinkable)? In
my native Scotland the water is lovely other than in some of the peat- infested
Hebrides and London water is fine. My experience of Parisian tap-water (ugh!)
is rather dated but it probably would not actually kill you. In Athens,
surprisingly, the water from the tap is excellent although that in many of the
springless Greek islands is not. In the US I suppose it is generally drinkable
but when you move to Asia and Africa the picture changes radically and the
water often carries ghastly diseases and dire microbic perils.
The plumber who mends your leaks and tightens your spigots
is a friend indeed. Sing his praises as you wallow in a hot, soapy bath
vigorously scrubbing with your loofah.
If you know more than one reliable plumber “Grapple them unto thy soul
with hoops of steel” in Polonius’ phrase. When your day of doom arrives and your
old body gurgles and bubbles, do not send for a doctor or a priest but send for
a plumber, who understands such things, and at least go out with a splash!
SMD
20.05.14
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014
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