The Overnight Editor: Kitchen sink karma

I clean the flat. I clean it Thursday nights, in case I need to bring someone back on Friday. Yeah look I KNOW how ridiculous that sounds, but I got to get motivation somehow. So I scrubbed my flat top to bottom then rattled out this post yeah I mean if you're GONNA be manic at least gotta put it to some USE yeah.

See - fed up with all that looping. You remember. First gotta clean the kitchen. That means cleaning the surfaces. That means doing the washing up. But sink's backed up, doesn't drain properly. Been like that for a week, starting to smell.

But first... No, can't think of anything. At last... I've solved the problem! Unblock the sink!

I take everything out, idlescrub chitta-chitta-chitta on the side but still draining too slowly, if draining at all. Squirt the plughole with sink cleaner, let it soak. Kettle on. Plunger from the under-cupboard. Boiling water then set to work. One palm over the overflow.

pump... suck... pump... suck...

Feel the resistance. Driving the congealed crap down and then back up again, water breaking it up.

pump... suck... pump... suck...

The water darkens. Like I read once about pasta, how it coats the intestines, and when they do an enema, I mean a real deep-bore enema - every day for two weeks, sat guru-like, nothing but herbal tea in one end, cold coffee out the other - they know, day thirteeen or fourteen, when they're getting down as far as they can go, cos thats when the PASTA starts to emerge.

pump... suck... plump... sluck...

Putting my whole weight onto it. Harder and harder. In-out-in-out.

plump. schluck. plump. schluck. plump.

Sinkbottom turns from clear and dark, to a thick brown with rice grains floating in it. Like second-hand mulligatawny. Reminds me of the night I ate those mussels my friend had left on his plate. Snot-runny like the top of an undercooked fried egg. Next afternoon I thought I was going to die, like really die, shoe-splattering the car park. Finally crawled home to an overhot bath and force-drinking orange juice by the litre, having heard it tastes the same coming up as it does going down. And after about three cartons in and out, I finally get to the bottom, get down to the mussels. Finally cough them up. What a night that was. Faster:

plumpschluck plumpschluck plumpschluck

Like pumping a stomach, arm a reciprocating piston who says wanking is bad for you-

pump-shlump-pump-shlump-pump-shlump-

Really getting down the hard stuff now. Down to the MUSSELS. Down to the PASTA-

shlump shlump shlum shlum shlum shlum shlum shlum-

That time at that party I was doing that girl I'd just met and I was twenty-two and I had to stop to go to that bathroom and throw up and I rinsed out my mouth and went back to the bedroom carried on and what a night that was-

shlum-shlum-shum-shum-shum-shum-shum-

Geyser of steaming spewsoup splurts up my shirt to my chin - Ignore it can't stop now its like fucking cant stop cos if you do this for her now maybe later she'll suck you back and nearly there nearly there nearly-

SHM-SHM-SHM-SHM-SHM-SHM-SHM-SHM-SHM-SHM-SHM-SHM-

yesyesYES SHPLUURppp-moksha!

buglub-bugluble...

aaaand relax. Stinkfluid drains meekly away. Clear. Finally, up through the plughole, and now unable to fit back down, there it is. The source, the blockage, the thing that was clogging everything up. I pick it up and look at it.

It is the neatly, deliberately burnt-off corner of a twenty pound note.

What a night THAT was.