That Fresh ‘n’ Flushed Out Feeling

 Somehow, and I don’t quite know how because I am usually very exact about these things, Vladimir Poo-Tin, our septic tank, managed to go three years without being emptied, rather than the usual two. I thought we were still on the two yearly schedule until I checked my diary for 2024 and could find no January record for it being emptied. I went to 2023…and, yes, there it was. 9th January - septic tank empty. 

I didn’t panic because there were no obvious signs in the field of us being awash with effluent (sorry if you’re eating your dinner). No bubbling up from the sewers, no tell-tale puddles around the soakaway, no dubious wafts of…well, you know what. Still, it ought to be done pretty soon, I thought, because we’ve never let it go three years between empties before now. I consulted with our neighbours, with whom we share the tank, and it was agreed I’d arrange to call the waste management company to arrange an emptying. 

Firstly, I couldn’t get through, so I left a message on the answer phone. It was a cheerful message for January given how grim I am feeling at the moment, but my cheeriness clearly had no effect on the lady who called me back because she sounded even grimmer than me. 

‘I’m just arranging appointments,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you back when I have a date for you but it will be some time in January.’

She called back a couple of days later. ‘We can come out Monday morning,’ she said. 

‘Super!’ said I, which is a word I usually avoid using but somehow it slipped out in my attempt at false cheeriness. I’ll be saying I’m super-excited next which will be an all-time linguistic low. 

The woman took my debit card details. ‘We won’t charge the card until we’ve emptied your tank,’ she said. 

‘And how much will you charge my card when you do?’ said I, as she had failed to tell me the cost of having one’s septic tank emptied these days. 

She told me the amount, which was only about £10 more than it was three years ago - bargain! - and then said, ‘And that’s for up to 500 gallons.’

Reader(s), I have no idea of the holding capacity of Vladimir, nor how much effluent two households produce over three years. I said, ‘It’s difficult to tell how full it is really, isn’t it?’ in a light-hearted chit-chat way. 

‘Well, by law you’re supposed to have it emptied every year,’ said Madam Tersely Cold. She bid me farewell and that was that.

Now, if anyone waves a law in my face I immediately have the urge to check it out. I went onto the government website and yes, there indeed, it did say you should empty your septic tank every year for various reasons, some of which seemed unduly scare-mongering. And then I went on various septic tank websites which pretty much all agreed that every 3 to 5 years was about average, subject to number of houses and people using it, of course. 

Well, who to believe? I know this current Labour government is proving very expert in its own emissions of effluent but I think the actual experts are the septic tank companies. Also, I did not vote for this current shower of shite so the likelihood of me going along with anything they call law is pretty slim. I thought, well, the worst that can happen is that the tank arrives on Monday and the operator declares we have exceeded our 500 gallons remit and we shall be charged more accordingly. The tank needs emptying. That’s all there is to it. 

The worse did not happen. But then it rarely does. After me spending time hacking away frozen undergrowth on Saturday so that the manhole covers were accessible, and rendering my hands and feet numb with the effort, a nice chap arrived on Monday morning at 10 past ten. He spent five minutes making a fuss over Nell, then flung various suction pipes over the hedge and into the field, where he screwed them all together, poked them sequentially into Poo-Tin’s three holes (no sniggering at the back, thank you), switched on some noisy pump effort in his lorry, and by 10.30 the job was done and he was on his way. No mention of overload at all. 

I still don’t know how we missed a year. I mean, I know stuff has been happening and having one’s septic tank cleaned out isn’t on the list of regular to-do’s but even so. A whole year?  At least it’s done now for another two years. Or maybe three. Perhaps I’ll write a story - ‘The Missing Year - What a Waste.’ 

I’m currently reading this…

Interesting, entertaining and informative. Nothing to do with septic tanks but I thought it’d make for a nicer blog picture.