Handy money-saving tips #1
Many years back I lived in a shared flat in Chalk Farm. Our flat was on the first and second floors of a house, and on the ground floor lived one of Camden Town's most unique characters. This fellow was thrifty - through necessity, as he was struggling to survive on the meagre allowance the council allowed him and he never quite got around to earning any other money, but I liked him as he was into music and films and smoking weed, and he had a bunch of stories to tell.

One day he called up to us, asking politely that we should stop flushing our toilets, as he was getting distressed by the bangers and mash backing up from the drains in the yard. Since there were five of us, and it was only a matter of time before someone needed to light a bum cigar, we called the council for him and they sent around a man to investigate the problem.

The man looked at the drains in the back yard, shook his head and went away. He returned with two other men. They pulled a set of drain rods out of their van then opened all the drain hatches in the front garden, had a prod around, shook their heads and went back to the van. Another van arrived, and a second squad of men opened the drains in the street outside the house, had a prod around, shook their heads and went back to their van. Eventually we had no less than twelve yellow jackets spreading from the back yard, through the house, to the front garden and the street beyond - then they congregated somewhere near the doorstep (we were watching with a kind of horrified fascination from the first floor), took hold of the drain rods and pushed. Then pushed again, and pushed again. And again, and again, and again...

It wasn't until a week later I got the full story from a mutual friend. It turned out that our eccentric neighbour, in order to save money, had been resorting to using his free copy of the yellow pages as bog roll. Over the course of a couple of books, the thick yellow sodden paper had become lodged in the pipes leading from the house to the sewers, and blocked them. However, it had blocked them about about 8 metres from the house, and solidified into a kind of papier-mâché - but mixed with everyone's shit, obviously - so for god knows how long, this giant yellow shitsnake had been building under the foundations, slowly growing in density until twelve men had to spend the best part of a day trying to destroy it.

And that is why, no matter how hard up you are, you should never use the yellow pages as toilet paper.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Tue 1 Apr 2008, 11:33, 2 replies)

Clickety-poo
Excellently told
(I grew it myself, Tue 1 Apr 2008, 12:03, closed)

you should never use the yellow pages as toilet paper
Amen!
(ShitBitch, Tue 1 Apr 2008, 14:49, closed)