Sewage Situation

18. December

“Have you got your wellies on?” my sister was clearly holding back the laughter now.
“It was a bit late for that when I was standing in it up to my ankles in just my socks…” I looked down at my now bare legs.
“Uh, do you know what kind of bacteria is in that?” her voice was a mixture of laughter and disgust now.
“Well, excuse me for not expecting to be ankle deep in sewage water when entering the bathroom. I don’t normally wear protective footwear to brush my teeth,” although very aware of the comedy of it all I was not quite ready to laugh about it yet.
“So you are standing in it now?” more giggling followed along with a running commentary to her by the sounds of it equally amused friends the other end.
“Well I might as well, it is too late anyway. And someone has to clean this mess up and I happen to be the only one here.” House sitting had suddenly into my worst nightmare and I just wished myself far far away.
“Have you told mum and dad?”
“No, I didn’t want to ruin their holiday just yet”
“I am so telling them first!” beep beep beep, and she had hung up on me.

When I lived with my sister Helene, my cousin Phil and friend Kris the only thing we really ever fell out over was the cleaning of the house. Normally it would start with me accusing them of doing f-all in the house compared to me. Then I would prove my point by demonstratively starting a cleaning frenzy leading to the rest of them having to help out. This strategy normally worked a treat until they felt they had been sufficiently punished and had restored the balance by some reluctant hovering or other contribution and they all turned on me for revenge. It would normally be triggered by me cleaning the bathroom without gloves or even worse by me cleaning the toilet brush holder. My housemates, apart from Kris who new better and stayed well out of it, would be more upset by this than by the house not being cleaned for three weeks. In fact they were really freaked out by it.

“What do you mean you cleaned the toilet brush holder in the sink?” Phil was rather flustered all of a sudden. For being such a messy dirty sod he was surprisingly worried about bacteria.
“Yes with bleach, would you rather I just left it in the corner?”
“But in the sink? Uhhh,” Helene was equally appalled.
“And then I cleaned the sink too!” In my opinion this was a bit rich coming from someone who allegedly had not cleaned the house even once while I was working in the UK all last summer. Rumor had it it took all three of them half a day to get it clean enough for them to dare pick me up from the airport.

Phil’s bacteria phobia was so strong it was out of the question to even consider touching the toilet without rubber gloves, when it was being cleaned anyway, strangely enough he didn’t normally wear gloves in there.

It was during one of these heated discussions that Phil actually said to me:
“If I had to marry you I would have become a wife beater!”
Well I don’t think so. I so would have killed him first! Besides luckily the family ties rule out anything like that anyway.

But the whole toilet brush discussion seemed a bit trivial now as the toilet brush was actually floating around in sewage water in the bathroom. It was twenty passed eleven at night and I really wanted to be in bed, but something told me that wouldn’t happen for a while. As tempting as it was to get out of there, close the door and hope it would just go away, I had a feeling I would regret it in the morning. So I went and got the dustpan instead and started scooping the water into a bucket –I had to get it out somehow.

Nearly two hours later when I found myself in the garden scrubbing myself with washing-up liquid and some other evil looking cleaning detergent under the hosepipe in a desperate attempt to disinfect myself, three things struck me:

1. That I was pretty happy we don’t have any neighbours that side of the house…
2. That outdoor showering in November is not something I would recommend
anyone…
3. That if this had happened to poor Phil he would have had to cut his arms and legs off…