The Good Life
There’s nothing like seeping sewage to ruin a long weekend, but all need not be lost.
There are things no man should see. And the Thing that was living in our septic tank is one of them. I tried not to look. But when I lifted the concrete lid from the top of our tank, there it was, staring at me.
Though momentarily caught off guard, I wasn’t about to be intimidated. I stared right back, being careful to meet its eye. I cursed quietly to myself. It reeked, but said nothing.
My life had been brought to this fearful juncture by the sudden and inexplicable appearance – right in the bloody middle of a long weekend – of toilet paper in the garden near the gully trap outside the bathroom.
The sudden appearance of toilet paper outside of strictly demarcated storage and usage zones not only means trouble, but also is an omen. It predicts a future in which a humongous bill appears in your letter box. Still, something had to be done, even if it was right in the bloody middle of a long weekend.
I am no plumber, but I quickly determined I would need a plumber. I quickly determined, too, there could be only two reasons for the wayward toilet paper, a blockage in the pipe to the septic tank, or a septic tank that was full.
I quickly determined it wouldn’t be the latter. We’d had our tank emptied a mere two years ago; it shouldn’t need emptying for another two years at least. This turned out to be one quick determination too far.
After bailing out the gully trap to see if I could see a blockage – done in the hope of a magic, bill-free cure – I decided the best place to put what I’d bailed out was the allegedly half-empty septic tank. It was then I discovered the Thing, a thing that only a man – but not this man – and his vacuum truck had any hope of defeating. I scuttled inside to the computer to start looking for such a character.
One of the certainties of life, along with death and taxes, is that plumbing emergencies always happen on public holidays. Even more certain is, that if you can find someone willing to come on a public holiday, they will demand a call-out fee even a doctor with fancy degrees would be embarrassed to charge.
I am pretty sure Ross, who was out hunting deer when I called his number, doesn’t have any fancy degrees. But he is a doctor: Dr Septic. He arrived the next afternoon.
When he lifted the lid on the tank, he was astonished by the Thing. “That’s the fullest I’ve seen a septic tank after two years,” he said, shaking his head. And then he got to work.
One of the largest fatbergs ever discovered was found a year ago in a sewer in Liverpool. It weighed 400 tonnes and was 250m long. The Thing would break no records, but it took Dr
Septic a good hour to break up, then suck up.
The emptying of the tank didn’t fix the problem. I was right: there was a blockage, too. Ross got on the blower. While we waited for his wife to bring his plumbing rods over, I gave him a beer, bummed a cigarette off him, and he told me how he chucked in farming to become Dr Septic. I told him how I’d chucked in Auckland to become a happy bum. We agreed we’d both made good decisions.
It took 20 minutes of digging by Ross, in the stinking heat, to find the pipe’s inspection panel. “I really appreciate you doing this on your day off,” I said. “I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t like you,” he said.
By 4.30pm on Wellington Anniversary Day, the doctor had cured the patient. We had another beer to celebrate. “I won’t charge you the call-out fee,” Ross said. “After doing all that, charge me like a wounded bull,” I said.
When the bill arrived, there was no call-out charge, and there was no fee for unblocking the pipe, either. The Thing was dead, and so was one of life’s certainties.
I gave him a beer, bummed a ciggy off him, and he told me how he chucked in farming to become Dr Septic.