I Almost Died Today
17 February 2010
So as I was walking along today the ground opened up and tried to swallow me whole. Well, maybe it wasn’t a deliberate attempt on my life but nonetheless there it was – a gaping hole in the middle of the road. At first I thought it was a pothole but it didn’t seem to have a bottom. More than this, there was a saucer-shaped depression around the hole where the road was sagging and so, naturally, I went onto the depression to see how deep the hole was. It was slightly soft underfoot and inside the hole there seemed to be what looked like a slow-flowing river. That was brown. And smelled. Strongly. Of sewage.
I peered into the hole and saw a great cavern that had opened under the street. The aggregates had been washed away by what I assumed was a leaking pipe and the road surface was being held aloft by pretty much nothing. Indeed, the patch on which I was standing was slowly sinking downwards. I’d better leap dramatically clear of this place, I thought and as I did the road fell away with a plop into the underground river.
Interesting, I thought. And then, to my horror, the water started to rise. Up it came until the hole was no longer there and I was watching a torrent of sewage flowing down the hill past me. It absolutely reeked. I watched it for a few minutes until the waters receded, the hole returned, and the depression in the road was ever so slightly deeper (though you can’t really see the depression in my photo).
If a car drove over the depression it would full-on collapse the road and the driver would be quickly engulfed by human effluent. Whilst a part of me secretly wanted to climb in the bushes and watch the onset of such a calamity the other side told me to fashion a crude traffic cone from wood that I could forage to prevent cars from suffering such a disaster. So off I went, returning with two flimsy wooden frames that I leaned into each other to make an obstacle around which cars would be forced to travel.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE RUDIMENTARY TRAFFIC CONE THAT I FASHIONED
Then I called the council. Having seen 2012 recently at the cinema I knew that a hole opening up in a road could be the onset of Armageddon and so it was only natural to get the council involved. But the council told me it was the water company who were responsible for sewage leaks and they gave me the number.
I was already late for my train but I thought that someone should try to fix the problem so I called them. I told the woman at the other end about the hole. She said, ‘Is it a pothole?’ and I said, ‘No, it’s just a regular hole.’ She said, ‘What’s the address of the hole?’ I said I didn’t know and she said ‘If you don’t know the address of the hole I can’t do anything.’ I didn’t even know holes had addresses so I gave her what I thought was the name of the street where the hole had occurred.
‘What number?’ she said.
‘No, no; it’s not in a house, it’s in the road. As I said, quite plainly, there is a hole in the road.’
‘What house number is it outside of?’
‘No idea. I don’t live there.’
‘I need the house number or we can’t send anyone out because it might not be our pipe.’
‘Well whose pipe do you think it is that is leaking poop all over the street?’
‘I don’t know without the house number.’
‘Okay, number 12.’
‘That’s not our pipe.’
‘That might not be the house number. I don’t know the house number.’
‘You said number 12.’
‘Yeah, I meant number 1.’
‘Oh, okay, that’s our pipe.’
‘Right.’
‘Someone will be there in the next 24 hours.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not being funny but the road is about to collapse and there is sewage physically flowing down the street.’
‘So would you say it’s an emergency?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ok, I’ll put that down. Someone will be out in four hours.’
‘Four hours?! I don’t think my rudimentary traffic cone will stand up for that long. A little gust of wind will sweep into the hole.’
‘Four hours.’
Honestly. It was ridiculous. If I worked for the water company and someone called me up to say that a road was about to collapse I would be interested. She just wanted to fob me off, as if I was the biggest hassle she had ever encountered. When I went back to the hole I noticed that a long crack had opened up at the edge of the hole, stretching twenty-odd yards down the hill in a jagged line. By this time an old man had come to keep vigil, along with a little old lady and a small dog. I was sure that they could handle the situation. My work here was done.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE HOLE AS IT IS NOW
(notice the absence of my rudimentary traffic cone)
2 comments
Written by Amii on 17 February 2010 at 22:38:00
This was hilarious!
Written by Rob on 18 February 2010 at 13:12:00
This is a superb piece of writing, trumped only by the image of your rudimentary traffic cone :o) Hope you never come across a hole like that again, next time it might just be the onset of Armageddon. Warmest Rob