Well. My first night shift over, and a few tales to tell already. I'd sort of expected to be sitting around half the night, waiting for a phone call, but it wasn't like that at all. We must have answered a dozen calls. I'd always imagined that plumbing was all about fixing burst pipes, but there was only one of those.

In a filthy kitchen showing all the signs of a recent "domestic", a sink had been pushed a good six inches out of place, and a mist of water sprayed out from the twisted joint under the tap. Peter found the supply valve and turned the water off. We wrestled the sink back into place and Peter fixed the connection.

There were two blocked toilets, utterly ghastly. What a stink, I tell you. Peter says they always leave it too long before calling him. He has a strange flexible plunger sort of thing that he rams down the loo. It worked both times last night, but Peter says it doesn't always. He didn't mention what he does if the plunger doesn't work, but I hate to think.

In most cases it was a blocked sink and involved taking out the trap and clearing it. One of these was truly  silly - someone had poured jelly down the sink and it had set solid.

Despite the fact that Peter is my cousin, I don't really know him very well. He was very nice, explaining everything he was doing, and letting me pull the spanner from time to time. In between jobs, we talked a lot, and he seemed very interested in my archaeology, saying I should stick to my guns and not be bullied into some dead-end profession.