I like to live by the old maxim – never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.

It has stood me in good stead over the years as some problems manage to fix themselves and others just fall apart..

I mentioned a few weeks ago that there was a problem with my kitchen sink. Water just wasn’t flowing out as quickly as it should, and emptying the sink was taking longer and longer. Yesterday I decided to tackle the problem.

Now in the good old days it was a simple job – you just unscrewed the U-bend and cleaned it out. Nowadays however they have to complicate things and the piping under the sink is like a final test in a plumber’s apprenticeship exam. There are pipes and joints everywhere.

The first job is to clear out all the bottles and spray cans and all the other cleaning junk that I never use from the shelves under the sink. Then I have to find some kind of container to catch the inevitable flood. Finally I unscrew as many joints as I can reach. That went well and I ended up with a basin full of bits of pipe including the U-bend.

I carted all the bits into the bathroom to flush them out. I’m not going to make the old mistake of flushing them in the kitchen sink! The bits were dirty a right – all gunged up with grease and shreds of food and other yucky stuff but none were actually blocked. Fuck! That meant it was the plug-hole unit itself.

The plug of course is one of those where you twiddle a lever, instead of a good old rubber plug on a chain so it is relatively complex. I unscrewed it and sure enough it was nearly blocked with revolting stuff. I cleaned it out and that’s where my problem began.

The unit is like one of those horrible looking burgers they keep advertising on television – layers of different items all squished together. My plug unit consisted of about four pieces each with a rubber seal and all held together by one bolt. To make matters worse they all had to be held in place underneath the sink while the bolt is inserted from the top. As neither of my arms is detachable this required some fierce contortions, with my left hand trying to hold the pieces in place underneath while my right hand tried to insert the bolt from the top. As my face was half way between the two, I had to do everything by feel. It only took about twenty attempts.

It’s working now. Water drains away properly and there are no leaks. I couldn’t connect the overflow as part of my contortions so I can never overfill the sink or else I’ll flood the kitchen.

It’s nice and clean looking too as I polished everything before reassembling it.

My back is fucked though.