Thursday 1 February 2001

Pic of the day: Goodbye to you my trusted friend ... well, my trusted WC. We may not exactly have had a lot of fun together, but still.

God and the WC

"One should obey the reminders of the Spirit" said my puritan friend, who visited me today again. It all started out a couple weeks ago ... OK, a bit longer.

My toilet has been shoddy since I moved in, more than a decade ago. At times I have had to flush it with water from a bucket, but eventually it has recovered (sometimes after months). I've decided long ago that I would replace it someday ... but not yet. Since I've generally spent my money on fun things like new computers and phone bills, it has never gone quite that far. A few weeks ago, the apparatus acted up again, and has done so ever since.

Then a couple of weeks ago, my friend came to talk, pray and borrow my scientific magazines. He's welcome to all of that. He also borrowed my toilet and discovered the problem. Evidently he was moved by a Higher Power to help me. But picking apart the cisterna, we found that the rubber part was way past its prime and caused the water to trickle down. So, my helpful friend recommended I buy a new part in town.

Next week he was over and helped me install the thing. I'm not very practical, while he is a builder of houses and stuff. During installation, however, we were unlucky enough to break a minor part. So he recommended I buy a new one, which I did. Today he came back, and gave credit to God. Who am I to disagree? The ways of God are unfathomable, and this epic approaches that adjective right now.

We put the various parts together (well, he did most of it) and then put them apart because one of the last parts had to be put in place first. But eventually we were actually putting the whole thing in place. My friend had brought lots of tools, and some advanced wrench was applied to some nameless part of the cisterna innards. "I'll hold this" he said about the other end of the nameless part, "you use the wrench." I felt that it would have been more appropriate to do it the other way around, given that I only few years ago discovered the difference between a wrench and a wench. But unlike my pious friend, I was not mindful of the reminders. (Possibly because there are too many voices in my head on a daily basis to say for sure who is who.) So I applied to the wrench the strength I've gained under this yellow sun. CRACK! "I think that's enough" said my friend.

Fortunately, my friend just happened to have read an ad for a certain shopping center outside town (usually he throws away those too, he told me) and there was a special offer on brand new toilets. So he recommended we go there next week and buy one. "I'm sure you have money" he said. I am not, it being just before payday, but there is always the credit card, and the other VISA card, and the other credit card too if all else fails. I'm really curious as to what happens next.

"I don't think we should bore into the concrete floor" I told him before he left. "There are electric heating cables there, which we might hit." "They always keep those at a goodly distance" he told me, him being an expert on building houses and all. Watch this space.