People here in Ireland seem to be desperate to get onto the property ladder.

Don’t they know what that entails?

It means they are responsible for everything that goes wrong, and some of those things aren’t so pleasant.

A couple of weeks ago the downstairs jax started acting funny.  It would flush and all would be normal until it finished flushing, whereupon the water level would slowly rise in the bowl and then subside again.  The water was perfectly clean as if the bowl was filling from the supply instead of the cistern.  For a while I though the jax had developed some kind of intellect and was just politely refusing my offering

This went on for a few days and then it settled back to normal.

Then it started again.  When it was flushed the water would rise half way up before slowly ebbing again.

Then it went back to normal.

Today I flushed it and the water merrily rose to the brim of the bowl and stayed there before ebbing over a period of minutes.

Fuck!

I have had to do this job a few times in the past.  It is not at the top of my list of favourite passtimes.  First of all I have to hack down the jungle that is our back yard.  Then I have to find and remove the manhole lid.  Opening the Honey Pot is not a nice job – it contains a semi-liquid, yet somehow solid mass of turds of all different colours and shapes.  I won’t describe it in detail – let’s just say it would give Jackson Pollock a lot of inspiration.

So I am faced with this semi-solid mass which shows no sign of shifting.  Also I am not exactly over enthusiastic about touching it.  So I gets me a branch from the woodland and I start poking.  All this does is move the sludge around and release an appalling stench. 

So I have to run a hose through the kitchen window and across the house to the yard door.  Penny is intrigued as she has forgotten we even have a yard door [I had to hack half a ton of ivy off it just to get it open].

I stand there with my hose in one hand [no jokes – I make the funny jokes today] and a stick in the other.  I poke and stir while aiming a feeble jet of water into the unmentionable.  I then have to nip into the jax for a flush and then run out the door to see the effect.  I do this a few times.

When it blows, it is quite spectacular.  I run out from my latest flush in time to see the Honey Pot fill almost to the brim, when suddenly the whole lot vanishes almost instantly down the sewers with a peculiarly hollow sucking sound.  All is clear and everything is now working properly.

Until the next time.

So my message to would-be house buyers is very simple.

Think long and think hard.

You may just be heading to stir up a whole load of shit.