Seltzogenes at every turn...

Today a large lorry equipped with some correspondingly large tubes arrived outside my house. Its overalled inhabitants heaved off a manhole cover, threaded the tubes down it, and set the lorry to 'Pump Loudly'. Half an hour later, the din of the pump was joined by a noise from my bathroom, as of a mighty fountain being momently forced from a chasm. It was an eery sight: my toilet bowl was splashing water everywhere, in a way that made me anticipate that a tentacle would soon emerge from it and drag me down after. Almost as strange, water was sprinking up through my bath plughole. I checked the toilet downstairs and found the same story, only more so: water all over the floor, towel, toilet rolls, etc, and a very strong smell of drains.

Unlike last week's Goon, these ones really had been sent by Erskine. They were nice, though: I told them what was happening, and one of them came in and wiped up the excess with a large roll of relatively absorbent paper and did his clumsy best to make amends. However, it turns out that the same scene was being repeated in every house in the street, most of them empty at that time of day, and many with carpeted bathrooms and exquisite fittings. An x-ray video of my street would have looked like the beginning of a Busby Berkeley piece, with toilets gushing skyward in syncopated harmony.

Ah, let us turn from this insalubrious scene to The Simpsons, which I watched with my supper, only to be rewarded by the kind of high-brow reference that you don't expect in Springfield:

Marge: Come on Homer, Japan will be fun! You enjoyed Rashomon.
Homer: That's not how I remember it.*

*Edited to correct my own memory. The irony!

Seltzogenes at every turn...

Today a large lorry equipped with some correspondingly large tubes arrived outside my house. Its overalled inhabitants heaved off a manhole cover, threaded the tubes down it, and set the lorry to 'Pump Loudly'. Half an hour later, the din of the pump was joined by a noise from my bathroom, as of a mighty fountain being momently forced from a chasm. It was an eery sight: my toilet bowl was splashing water everywhere, in a way that made me anticipate that a tentacle would soon emerge from it and drag me down after. Almost as strange, water was sprinking up through my bath plughole. I checked the toilet downstairs and found the same story, only more so: water all over the floor, towel, toilet rolls, etc, and a very strong smell of drains.

Unlike last week's Goon, these ones really had been sent by Erskine. They were nice, though: I told them what was happening, and one of them came in and wiped up the excess with a large roll of relatively absorbent paper and did his clumsy best to make amends. However, it turns out that the same scene was being repeated in every house in the street, most of them empty at that time of day, and many with carpeted bathrooms and exquisite fittings. An x-ray video of my street would have looked like the beginning of a Busby Berkeley piece, with toilets gushing skyward in syncopated harmony.

Ah, let us turn from this insalubrious scene to The Simpsons, which I watched with my supper, only to be rewarded by the kind of high-brow reference that you don't expect in Springfield:

Marge: Come on Homer, Japan will be fun! You enjoyed Rashomon.
Homer: That's not how I remember it.*

*Edited to correct my own memory. The irony!