Saturday 7 January 2017

Happy Bloody New Year

So we welcomed the new year with a round of parties - four stop offs in total. There was family,  champagne and gin cocktails, sparklers, and lots of dancing. I made a dress to celebrate in - a red dress, Japanese kimono influence. Much approval of the dress.

The Panther's mother was in hospital the whole holiday season - receiving cancer treatment. We had to pop to her house around the new year and discovered there had been an upsurge due to a blocked stack pipe blocking all the sewerage from four flats - her ground floor was awash with dirty toilet water, used toilet tissue, baby wipes that someone was flushing down the toilet (they don't break down - they had clogged the whole system), and excrement. Each time someone upstairs flushed their loo a little bit more flooded out over the top of his mothers downstairs toilet. Dismay. Then action - borrowed sandbags from the waste team at the end of the road. They got us through to the emergency service to come and unblock the drain (finally came about midnight - after Thames Water had tried and failed to unblock it - its only at times like these that you struggle to understand the pipe ownership issues that exist).

Then I had a resurgence of the cold that had clung to me since November. It hit us both with a vengeance. We were stricken and took to our bed, not to surface for four days (due back at work on the 5thbut didn't make it). Finally started to feel better after feeding ourselves chicken broth heavy with garlic, ginger and chillis.

And then I discovered that what I thought were mosquito bites ( I know - it's January and they don't like the cold) were actually bed bugs. Ewwwww. Almost at last straws....


2 comments:

Z said...

Oh blimey, how awful. I'm so sorry and I hope the cancer treatment is effective.

Having a septic tank and a very flat garden (meaning there's little downward flow in the pipes) means I'm very conscious of everything that could affect the drains. It astonishes me, what people think it's fine to put down the sink or toilet.

I hope there's something that can be used against bedbugs nowadays - it used to be very difficult, my parents had it in a room in their hotel back in the '50s and skirting boards and wallpaper had to be stripped off.

Harriet (the fshlady) said...

Living in these huge conurbations we forget about the importance of drainage and sewage until something drastically goes wrong. I had no idea the difference between toilet paper and wet wipes in terms of decomposition.

We have been spraying against the bedbugs, and so far have reduced my bites to none, the old ones are about healing up...

Better news - we bought a kiln!