For some possibly simple yet still unexplained reason the kitchen sink here at my humble abode has been clogged for the past week or so. Not being the busiest of chefs I think my flatmate has had it worse than me, but then again he fled the city Friday afternoon and I believe has yet to return. For me on the other hand, skipping town to go home just ain’t that simple – I have 1200 km to travel.

So I stayed in with no greater plans for the kitchen than breakfast and a possible late night snack. Friday passed without too much hassle, though the dishes remain. For Saturday dinner I settled for the local free delivery – ham and mushroom pizza. Simple, affordable, and quite OK when washed down with a can of beer.

Later that night, Saturday that is, I decided to finish off that last can of beer I knew was in the far corner of the bottom shelf in the fridge. I had about 40 minutes left of a Poirot movie and was getting thirsty from all the mysterious shooting and cold, logical thinking. (Also, I had been eating Pringles.) I hit pause and swung out the door heading for the kitchen… And was met by a pool of water half an inch deep – not including the height of the carpet – covering the whole kitchen area and half the living room area. The sink was full and overflowing with odd colored water.

It took me three turns with the bucket – probably close to 40 liters – that the maintenance guy had left “just in case” when he was in last Thursday to try to fix the soon-to-be-smelling problem. (Obviously to no avail. And the plummer he had called for had yet to show up.) I even had to sacrifice one of my two bathroom towels to get at least some of the dirty water up from the carpet and down the toilet where it belonged.

Not knowing where the water came from (I hadn’t been using the kitchen sink all day), I feared that the monster of greasy wateriness would return and take over even more of the flat. And as the hour was well past 1 o’clock, I took a stroll down to the security guard to let him know what was going on. He joined me back and together we reasoned that there was nothing we could do but wait and hope. He would leave a note for the maintenance guys to return and have another look first thing Sunday morning.

As said was done. As sharp as 10 o’clock as anything can be on a Sunday morning the same maintenance guy who was in on the Thursday came knocking the next morning. He was quite surprised at the amount of water that had left it’s tracks after finding it’s way back up to an unscheduled tete-a-tete with our wall-to-wall carpet and quickly restarted his search for the secret monster lair.

He struck water (!) on his first attempt. Seems the my unwelcome guest originated from the kitchen sink one floor up and had carried with it the remains of what had been a late, 2nd floor dinner. Both sinks were quickly declared off-limits.

Having neither appetite nor will to make even the simplest of breakfasts I hopped the first bus to town and spent the whole day taking advantage of one of the things this city really knows – Sunday shopping. I didn’t really buy anything, but I’ve had two large coffees, one foot-long Subway, a pint of Guinness, a glass of wine, a Chicken curry (in which I found a hair and had it returned for a new plate – with out hair but with cold rice. Not going back there any time soon!) and a Jameson on the rocks. No clogged sink is gonna keep me hungry!

Oh, the beer, by the way, was left in the fridge. It will be enjoyed once the coast is clear – pun intended.