Sewers and Snoring

We have had lots of different trucks on our street for the past month or two sucking out the sewer drains and taking the stuff away. One of the trucks was amusingly named Charlie’s Takeaways. This morning a new lot of trucks and diggers appeared and they’ve started digging up the street to replace the sewer drains altogether. The February earthquake obviously damaged the drains so extensively that they need to be replaced. I went for a walk this afternoon and the new hole in the street has revealed an unpleasant smell.

Apparently the Christchurch sewerage system is horrendously complex and very difficult to repair. The city is completely flat and drains need to slope in order to drain. So the Christchurch sewer drains have the slightest of slopes to them and descend deeper and deeper underground as they near the treatment plant. But any bump or kink in this tiny slope sends everything backwards and it looks like this has been happening on our street.

On another topic, Ben was putting Daniel to sleep last night. After a little while Daniel said: “Daddy, stop snoring”. Who is putting whom to bed?