Autumn has returned, and with it the gloom. It's damp and grey outside, and la bienheureuse is in Germany for 2 days teaching colleagues how to use the new product registration templates. Saturday was the last day of the brief Indian summer, but spoiled by a trip to the pub to watch football. Our usual haunt being taken over by egg-chasers, we were forced to patronise the Smoking Dog. Bad omen - last time I was in there was for the infamous match featuring a mercenary striker taunting his former fans. Ah well, onward the Russian mafia funded blues next week...
Saturday had, however, started off quite well with the more or less successful completion of my latest DIY project. Our apartment is lovely, but it has one major detraction - the cupboard-like WC. Its position bang next to the front door is bad enough, but the real problem is the lack of ventilation. Not to put too finer point on it, bad odours have a tendency to linger. The problem of retch inducing stenches in the toilet can occasionally rear its ugly head, particularly when we have visitors and the resultant successive bowel movements. Without wishing to linger too long on bodily functions, of course it goes without saying that the main malodorous culprit is the author. Everybody knows women and guests don't make bad smells.
Ahem. To cut a long story short, I recently carried out some investigations to see whether the aeration could be improved. There is a vent in one corner of the toilet ceiling, but its ability to evacuate unpleasant odours seemed virtually non-existent. Examination of other vents in the bathroom and kitchen suggested that all were connected to pipes, which in turn connect to the central ventilation shaft. So, why was the one in the toilet so inefficient? Turns out the vent wasn't connected to anything, and what's more, it was covered by a board. By poking fingers through the hole I managed to move the board, but as far as I could tell there was just a dark space beyond.
I needed some way to see what was above the ceiling. Not easy when the ventilation hole was too small for me to get a hand through, let alone much else. Fortunately, a certain amount of ingenuity and a bit of lateral thinking led me to the construction of a Heath-Robinson apparatus involving a small compact camera taped to a foot ruler. All it then took was a method of taking photos remotely, achieved by assiduous use of the delayed shutter release. Anyway, after a lot of hit and miss, I eventually managed to build up a complete picture of the space above the ceiling. And much to my satisfaction I discovered that there was indeed a ventilation pipe leading down to the toilet ceiling. The problem was that for some reason it ended in the corner diagonally opposite the ventilation hole, and the end appeared to be sealed to the ceiling.
So, I bit the bullet and decided to drill a hole in the correct corner. Of course, the problem was that I was relying on a series of poorly focussed, badly exposed photos, which failed to give a precise estimate of the ventilation duct's position. And you've guessed it, my first hole was in the wrong place. Eventually however, I hit the pipe. My problem now was that I had a hole in the ceiling which was twice as big as it needed to be. That was solved with an appropriately oversized rectangular ventilation grille. Purchasing said grille involved a trip to an out of town shopping centre, for which I decided to take the tram rather than the car. The journey was enlivened by a local loony bearing a startling resemblance to Ahmadinejad, who insisted on chatting to me in a low voice and an accent I didn't understand. I must have nodded in the right places and murmured the right things because he eventually left me alone and went off to pester others on the tram or build his own nuclear weapon, allowing me to escape and make my purchase.
Back at home on Saturday, I completed the job by shaping the hole in the plasterboard to fit the grille. So we now have a toilet ceiling with two neat ventilation grilles instead of one. And has it made any difference? The jury is still out. In fact, a sensible jury would stay out, but anyway, a suitable bowel movement this morning did allow me to test the new system. While initial evidence (a sniff test) suggests the ventilation has improved, I'm not sure the test product was sufficiently smelly. The acid test awaits a period of more active digestion. It may not be long. Ma bien-aimée is proposing to invite some friends round for a curry on Thursday...
