I got through the checkpoint without being challenged, and proceeded into the territories that were my ancestral lands, and made my way through distantly familiar streets to the house in which I grew up in bucolic 1960s then-outer-suburban Melbourne, high on the hill overlooking the Maribyrnong valley.
I found her snoozing in front of the television, which was shouting at full volume about some political issue. I turned it down slightly and went through to the kitchen where a small mountain of plates and pots and plastic meals-on-wheels containers rose up next to the sink. I made a start on the mountain but didn't get far because the sink wasn't draining. I put the brush down and wandered through the vastness of the house into an old dusty abandoned bedroom full of memories and linoleum. I opened a wardrobe and shoved several hundred 1960s ladies coats along the railing until I found an unused wire coat hanger. Returning to the kitchen, I unwound the coat hanger at the part where the wire twirls around itself and made a hook at one end. Harder with bare hands than it sounds. Then I emptied the sink of dirty plates and dove the wire into the sea and searched for the plug hole. I found it and probed for some minutes before drawing it up. It brought up some grey matter that might once have been food, but its tail end had dragged up something metallic that stopped at the grate. I twisted the wire and a teaspoon surfaced. It was no longer silver or chrome, but a kind of weathered gunmetal. I lay it aside on the drainer and went back into the pipes. Same result: grey matter and another teaspoon.
She had woken by now and had the kettle on because that's what you do when you have company. We drank tea. Then I went back to work. Twenty minutes and five more spoons later, I thought I must have been getting close. The sink was draining well now, but I worried that if the spoons had created kind of filtering ladder effect, when I removed them any remaining gunk might settle into a solid mass and cause a worse blockage. I was up to seven spoons. The plumbing is original top-quality bullet-proof 1954 vintage, all copper; and the plug hole was the type with slats, allowing small items to fall through.
I got to fourteen teaspoons and laid them all out on a newspaper like a prize catch of fish. The bowls of the last four or five were worn away, as if by acid. They looked like they had sat in a shipwreck for two hundred years, except that spoons out of shipwrecks never seem to corrode that badly. I thought there might be one or two spoons left in the u-bend but the sink was draining perfectly now, so I stopped.
Later I bought a metal plug hole filter that stops food matter going into the drain. That would suffice until we can bring the 1954 plug hole into the twenty-first century.
I once wondered hypothetically where all the spoons went. Little did I realise.
I found her snoozing in front of the television, which was shouting at full volume about some political issue. I turned it down slightly and went through to the kitchen where a small mountain of plates and pots and plastic meals-on-wheels containers rose up next to the sink. I made a start on the mountain but didn't get far because the sink wasn't draining. I put the brush down and wandered through the vastness of the house into an old dusty abandoned bedroom full of memories and linoleum. I opened a wardrobe and shoved several hundred 1960s ladies coats along the railing until I found an unused wire coat hanger. Returning to the kitchen, I unwound the coat hanger at the part where the wire twirls around itself and made a hook at one end. Harder with bare hands than it sounds. Then I emptied the sink of dirty plates and dove the wire into the sea and searched for the plug hole. I found it and probed for some minutes before drawing it up. It brought up some grey matter that might once have been food, but its tail end had dragged up something metallic that stopped at the grate. I twisted the wire and a teaspoon surfaced. It was no longer silver or chrome, but a kind of weathered gunmetal. I lay it aside on the drainer and went back into the pipes. Same result: grey matter and another teaspoon.
She had woken by now and had the kettle on because that's what you do when you have company. We drank tea. Then I went back to work. Twenty minutes and five more spoons later, I thought I must have been getting close. The sink was draining well now, but I worried that if the spoons had created kind of filtering ladder effect, when I removed them any remaining gunk might settle into a solid mass and cause a worse blockage. I was up to seven spoons. The plumbing is original top-quality bullet-proof 1954 vintage, all copper; and the plug hole was the type with slats, allowing small items to fall through.
I got to fourteen teaspoons and laid them all out on a newspaper like a prize catch of fish. The bowls of the last four or five were worn away, as if by acid. They looked like they had sat in a shipwreck for two hundred years, except that spoons out of shipwrecks never seem to corrode that badly. I thought there might be one or two spoons left in the u-bend but the sink was draining perfectly now, so I stopped.
Later I bought a metal plug hole filter that stops food matter going into the drain. That would suffice until we can bring the 1954 plug hole into the twenty-first century.
I once wondered hypothetically where all the spoons went. Little did I realise.
Oh dear. I'm glad you got things fixed, and I hope your mother is in good health. I spent a large chunk of my Sunday checking on my parents myself, so I know how it is.
ReplyDeleteShe is only just reasonable for her age, but very plucky and thoroughly unperturbed by current issues. At least outwardly. Every spoon that rose out rose out of the pipes was greeted by a mad cackle.
ReplyDelete