The Curse of the Toilet Blocker

Say his name.

I am Plumber’s Bane.

Choker of pipes, soiler of flushes and wreaker of lavatory calamity.

I am the one who blocks.

I am the dark warning tradesmen pass on to their sons. 

I go by many names.

The uptown drain-buckler. The sitting death. The unplungeable bulk. The black damsman. The brooding bombardier. The Oxfordshire coathanger mangler. The last floodmaker. The beast of backdoor burden.

Words scant spoken in greasy spoons, ‘less by foolhardy apprentices, who know not the grim force they have called upon.  

They laugh. They laugh, until they don’t.

An excerpt from my semi-autobiographical restroom drama/protest novelette ‘The Trial of Plumber’s Bane: F*ck da Cistern.”

A blocked toilet is many things, and, as with life, from its wreckage, each of us must pull our own meaning. Myself, I have taken something from each lavatory I’ve bested; be it a transformative teaching, a bout of waterborne giardia, or the last gurgle of its warranty. 

Yes, a blocked toilet is many things, but, the one thing it is not, is romantic. A lesson the great unmoving vortex chose to share with me one couple’s getaway.

Nature, of which even my foul blunders are a part, took its course. With the detached authority of a trauma surgeon, I called out of the bathroom for a coat hanger. Stat. The poor thing had shouldered its last jacket. How it would soon long for the relative glamour of a role in makeshift torture.

What goes on behind our bathroom doors is the last mystery. Now I had always assumed everyone else hooked free a U-bend, once a fortnight. The revulsion on my girlfriend’s face said otherwise. She left the premises.

Newly single, I mouthed my delicate impediment across the desk of the reception. The hotelier, nodded discretely, with the usual air of camp supremacy.

“Toilet blockage in the honeymoon suite!” he shrieked across the not-unbusy foyer.

An attractive young female member of staff hurried into view.

“Toilet blockage in the honeymoon suite!” 

This didn’t so much as graze the well-plumbed depths of my embarrassment.
Conveniently, I have no shame - and have developed a unique capacity for enjoying embarrassment in the moment. I smiled and waved my apologies.

4-star service. 2-star plumbing - read my all-caps Yelp review.

I am an agent of destruction. I am an agent of change - continued my all-caps Yelp review.

Cut corners with my piping, I’ll cut corners with yours - spelled out my nailed-complaint, with letters trimmed lovingly from Heating & Plumbing Monthly Magazine (HPM), year in review. No thy enemy, and you shall know thy self.


I sit here today, legs benumbed for my efforts, as the only man in human history who has blocked toilets on four continents*. The sun never sets on my clogged empire.

Nobody can tell me anything. I don’t read the Daily Mirror, I go and have a look. I’ve been about a bit. I’ve been. I’ve played party-pooper in the sandy stalls of the Copa Cabana; I’ve undermined the porcelain thrones of New York, New York; I’ve squatted shut holes in the lightless rainforests of Cúc Phương. I’ve jammed latrines in Moscow at breakfast and busted the John at Wall St nick in time for tea**.

I am Plumber’s Bane.

Say my name, I dare you.

*see:

** I was attempting a reference, but it’s so niche here’s the video.

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