In the road outside our house, is a drain.  Nothing exciting there, I know.

About ten years ago, some pikeys nicked it. Well, they nicked the grate. It was a good solid grate and probably worth a fair bit of money down at the dodgy scrap metal merchants.

I returned from work, that evening, to find a hole in front of the drive.

I reported it to the council and they said that there had been a spate of them in the area, but that they would fix it as soon as they were able.  Sure enough, within a couple of days, I returned home to find a nice new drain grate had been fitted.

I was a little disappointed though. This grate wasn’t as hefty as the previous one and it hadn’t been fitted flush to the road surface. It was about an inch below. And they hadn’t made a particularly good job of concreting it in. All in all, it was a bit shoddy.

Due to the drain’s location, when driving on and off my drive it’s pretty impossible not to drive the wheels over the drain and, now that there was a bit of a drop, it meant that the weight of the car dropping on top of it just pushed the drain down further and further through the shoddy concrete, until it was a good few inches down.

Consequently, the drain has never been cleaned out by that big tanker thing that comes up the road with a giant hoover attachment, because they have never been able to get it open, jammed into the concrete as it is.

I’m sure they must have reported it back to the council and I myself have reported it several times, but nothing ever happens. Sometimes, someone comes out and looks at it, sprays some orange paint around it and then buggers off.  The paint eventually fades away and the following year someone comes out and paints around it again.

Well, it was a lovely bright day, yesterday, and so I cleaned the car. When I went to pour the dirty bucket of water down the drain, I noticed that there was barely any drain visible, as the grate was completely clogged up with leaves and detritus. I got a mahoosive screwdriver and a hefty brush and I spent ten minutes cleaning everything away. I was quite pleased with my handiwork, as it looked so much better with all the crud removed and it also meant that if it rained, water could actually flow into the drain, as it was supposed to. It was now functional again.

And then, this morning, two flat-bed trucks sporting orange flashing lights pulled up outside the house and four blokes got out, dug up the road and replaced the drain.

If I’d known that to get it replaced all I had to do was clean the bloody thing, I’d have done so years ago!