Not my pipe, not my problem

This was not at all how this was supposed to go. You know when you decide to do something, and in your mind’s eye, everything goes smoothly and perfectly and basically without a hitch? Well, that is not at all how this weekend turned out. Every now and then, I like to take a weekend off and fly to a different part of the country to have a bit of time to myself. It’s also a pretty wicked excuse to do some travel and a little bit of exploring around my home country. Over the last few years, since hostels have become this whole huge big thing, I’ve started getting accommodation that way. It’s much more personable than holing myself up in an apartment and I really get the feel of the whole city a lot more. The one thing I didn’t realise is that, when you stay in someone’s real life apartment, you sometimes have to deal with their real life problems.

Everything was going just swell for the first day and then, in the middle of the mother-loving night, one of the bathroom pipes burst. And when I say ‘it burst’, I mean it burst. There was water everywhere and it was not slowing down or going away. So suddenly, in the middle of what was supposed to be a holiday, I was stuck calling an emergency plumber to come and deal with the drain clearing. The trouble with that was that unlike being at home, where I would have some vague idea as to who I could call, in Melbourne I was at a complete loss over what to do.

Actually, to be honest, at home the first thing I would have done is call my mum, but being so far away it wouldn’t make sense. I’m sure mother would know exactly what to do and who to call. She is always calm and level headed in a crisis. I spent the better part of my weekend away dealing with this blocked drain. Melbourne plumbing, apparently, is really prone to this kind of problem, since the pipes are much older than the stuff we have back home. I still had a nice holiday but I must say It did kind of put a dampener on the whole experience.