Chaps from the district council turned up today with a huge tanker to empty the cess pit here. The pit itself is fifty or sixty yards downhill from the nearest place where a truck or indeed any vehicle can be left. They connected up a lot of lengths of hose, got to work and were done in about an hour.
They were youngish geezers, cheerful and agreeable amazingly enough. Even with protective clothing it isn't a job I would really fancy, spending a good part of each day in the pong of other people's excrement. Perhaps they are decently paid. They certainly deserve to be.
If I wasn't so broke I would have bunged them, or tried to. I doubt if they expect it but a drink never comes amiss. Made me feel mean.
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Made me recall a character called Marlon in a strip cartoon many years ago in Daily Mirror.
He aspired to be a brain surgeon or "a bloke wot goes down sewers in big rubber boots". He fel both to be equally prestigious. I suppose they sort of are!
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Read "The Specialist" by Charles Sale, and it will have you chuckling over privies and the oddities of the people who commision them.
In fact, keep a copy in the downstairs bog to delight your visitors.
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My mate was on a local council, he started off driving dust carts and road sweepers but got himself noticed cos he looked after the equipment and found ways to cut costs considerably whilst getting the job done, he came from old school haulage and was reliable and didn't milk the sick pay.
He's risen well in the ranks now after he went on as many courses as he could manage and got the right quals to move up.
I'm rather proud of him TBH as he struggles with literacy but can put his hand to anything and gets by, they must have realised how good he was as he was backed all the way by some senior officers despite his written word not being the best.
In his dust cart/roadsweeper days the money wasn't fantastic but the hours were short making it effectively very well paid per hour, but most of all he enjoyed it.
Sounds like your septic tank chaps have a similar outlook AC, they'll have the right protective equipment and the job does have advantages as i found out when i used to drive an offal carrier with underbelly blood tank with splashes of blood and guts around...the old bill and VOSA avoided you like the plague, could do any speed you liked once they got a whiff plod vanished..;)
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Thing I forgot to mention: they brought their own clean plastic bucket, asked politely if they could fill it at the outside tap which they did several times, and left not a speck of crap or filth anywhere.
Sou'Wester!
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>> they brought their own clean plastic bucket,
Ive never seen the process, our own pit being ever-lasting, but somehow I imagined it involved pipes and a pump, not a bucket :)
My BIL coined a nice slogan for the cess pit emptying concern: "Dyfed Sludge - We're at your convenience".
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They used to call the trucks honey-wagons. Don't know if they still do.
Around here there are a number of Honeypot Lanes . Apparently from honey pit. i.e where the contents of cess pits would have been be emptied.
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>> They used to call the trucks honey-wagons. Don't know if they still do.
>>
>> Around here there are a number of Honeypot Lanes . Apparently from honey pit. i.e
>> where the contents of cess pits would have been be emptied.
>>
That's interesting. I was watching Karl Pilkington doing his "Idiot Abroad" schtick recently, up in Eskimo country somewhere. What with the ground being permafrost, sewerage can't be installed. So they all do it in a plastic bag in a bucket, and stick it out on the front porch to freeze and be collected by roving binmen types. They call these buckets "honey buckets", which I thought a bit weird. Evidently the term has its roots in Merrie Olde Englandshire, so thanks CGN for filling in a bit of an etymological gap there!
There's a Honeypot Lane in Tilehurst, which by my experience is much more suitably named than I previously though.
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>>Around here there are a number of Honeypot Lanes . Apparently from honey pit. i.e where the contents of cess pits would have been be emptied.
There`s only one in this town - nothing to do with cess-pits, its where the local housing Assc puts all the single young Mums.
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Rather me actually.
The suburbs of Warsaw are rapidly expanding but the infrastructure cannot keep up. We all have a pit here, everyone with a proper house does. Our pit is 8 cubic metres and used to take 3 weeks to fill and would cost about 15 squids or so. It's now £40 but now takes 6-8 weeks to fill. No more one person per bath, we use it then leave it for the next one. Showering as quick as possible and only flushing for number twos. And I empty washing bowls in a corner of the garden. (I'm obsessed with breaking the 9-week record)
Our street has 45 houses and every day 3 or 4 trucks drive down and empty the tank. There are hundreds of streets just like mine in this area. I used to think that if I wanted to open a business, I'd sell food and medicine - it's a necessity. But we all need our crap carrying away too. Whenever I pay our Poo Guy he opens a wad of notes as thick as dictionary, and I'm not exaggerating. He has his own truck and his Dad has one too and he starts every 7 am till early evening, Mon-Sat. It takes 10 minutes to pump it out, probably takes 3 customers to fill his truck and he empties at the local facility. Always takes 3 days or so to get him to pump our pit - he's busy. It's a nice guaranteed earner. You don't see Polish taxi drivers waving a thick wad like that.
Last year though, they dug a sewage pipe through the main road of our village and they're still digging it out of the village towards a new sewage facility that they're building at the moment. They're digging 'spurs' and ours will be next year probably. Within a few years our village will be piped up, but there's a village behind us with no pipes, and another behind that and another and another. That's decades of guaranteed crap.
I'd like to drive a truck like that rather than sitting here staring at crap on a screen. Of course, I'd have to have a fabulous stereo in my truck...
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Bloke who used to empty my sceptic tank when we lived on Bodmin Moor used to be a well-known jockey before he became Shi'ite shifter, he had a nice, um, spread, around here: goo.gl/maps/nreaX
Where there's muck etc. etc.
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I wasn't aware that a local council would empty a cess pit. When we had a septic tank I always used to get a private contractor to empty it, and it was a one-man job. Does your council do it free-of-charge?
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It isn't the local council but the district one, from a town 20 miles away. I think there is a charge, not sure though.
Our immediate neighbours and relations whose house is at the other end of the front lawn do use a private contractor to empty their pit.
By the way: the bucket was for cleaning up after them, not for carrying the poo!
There are people in third-world cities whose job entails carrying drums of human excrement on their heads from people's earth closets or buckets to wherever they take it (straight to the lagoon in Lagos judging by the pong that comes off that). I doubt if they get paid much.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Tue 18 Jun 13 at 15:55
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They were just going through the motions, Lud.
Ted
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Heh heh... but only after the motions had gone through us...
:o}
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Mi amigo Laurie Smith, the leather craftsman, did many jobs in his life, one of which was a night soil man, when he lived in East Meon, Hampshire.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_soil
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Walking through kampongs near Ipoh, Malaya we were often unlucky enough to meet the honey-wagon, into which pails of human waste were emptied. We must have set a sprint record or two: worse even than durian!
Last edited by: NIL on Tue 18 Jun 13 at 18:05
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In our village human waste was collected once a week by horse and cart.No flushing toilet, big metal buckets and wipe you'r bum with newspaper.Those where the days.
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As a child when caught short out of doors somewhere - can't remember where - I used certain biggish, fairly soft-looking leaves for that purpose Dutchie... trouble was they were sort of a bit hairy and that could start to itch terribly later on.
Newspaper, yeah, but printer's ink on yr pants as well as traces of the other... Arabs and Muslims have the right idea, a handheld bidet thingy. They think paper's insanitary. It is rather - even water is a bit - and it's a bit labour-intensive. Water would seem to be best.
Er...
I do wish you'd all stop talking about crap.
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I have just returned from a Med' cruise with P&O and had two bouts of food poisoning aboard so currently this subject is very close to my heart. Vacuum flush though so ensure you don't hit the go button if yerarse has formed a perfect seal!
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>> Arabs and Muslims have the right idea, a handheld bidet thingy.
Can anybody give the exact name? I'd like to Google it.
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>> Arabs and Muslims have the right idea, a handheld bidet thingy. They think paper's insanitary.
Yep, we have ''shattaffs'' (SS) in both bathrooms, warm water piped, a cold blast up the nethers when the waters just above freezing is not nice.
Replaced a bidet with one when we refitted, so impressed we stuck one in the other bog too.
Last edited by: gordonbennet on Tue 18 Jun 13 at 20:37
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I could be wrong....but don't the senior royals use day old chicks ?
Ted
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Somewhere at the back of my mind there's a joke lurking about a bear and a rabbit. It'll come to me...
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Has anyone encountered those German toilets in which offerings are kept on a little shelf, above the water, for inspection before flushing down?
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Yes, as a 15 year old on a school orchestra trip to Germany. I thought then the Germans were weird in that respect and still do!
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>> Has anyone encountered those German toilets in which offerings are kept on a little shelf,
>> above the water, for inspection before flushing down?
Yep. They were original equipment in Center Parcs Villas at Sherwood but have mostly been removed now as part of update/renovation. Conveniences in swim pool change area are still the shelf type though.
Being a German thing they're also commonplace in Alsace.
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>> Has anyone encountered those German toilets in which offerings are kept on a little shelf,
>> above the water, for inspection before flushing down?
>>
Not just German. I've got an antique British one, rescued from a skip. I'm not sure whether to install it somewhere or put it on eBay.
A distant relation of mine in the nineteenth century patented an earth closet. The plans are here - you could make one at home:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Moule
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The very jovial bloke who empties the septic tanks around here has a big sign on his lorry saying 'Don't Panic! I'm On My Way'.
Years ago I was involved in an investigation into crooked contractors emptying the honey tanks of long-distance aircraft and spraying the contents (illegally) straight onto farmers' fields. I remember crouching in a hedge on the Hampshire border about 5am one summer morning, retching at the smell of what was being sprayed on the field and thinking 'Maybe it's time to do something more rewarding with your life'.
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>> Has anyone encountered those German toilets in which offerings are kept on a little shelf,
>> above the water, for inspection before flushing down?
>>
Ah yes, the "Inspection platform", experienced those whilst studenting in the Soviet Union. One student colleague of mine, a Glaswegian of somewhat medieval manners, used to enjoy photographing his more impressive moments and sharing them with the group. A diet mostly based on cabbage, potato and meat(ish) gristle of indeterminable origin was quite useful in this respect.
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>> used to enjoy photographing his more impressive moments and sharing them with the group.
There's a website called "ratemypoo" for that sort of thing. I advise you not to go there though. The "ratemyboobs" one is far better ;)
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A hilarious book - USSR: From an Original Idea by Karl Marx, by Marc Polonsky and Russell Taylor - surmises the situation of the day most succinctly. It posits that the inspection platforms exist in order to exploit the fact that one's daily motion is the most interesting and variegated aspect of Soviet life. They were utterly correct.
Getting back to the original topic, I'd pack up my laptop and burn my desk to go and work on one of these poo-hoover trucks, if it paid about £50k per annum. I like the idea of honest, manual, outdoor work, however I don't like the idea of the rates of pay that usually go with it.
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if it paid about £50k
>> per annum. I like the idea of honest, manual, outdoor work, however I don't like
>> the idea of the rates of pay that usually go with it.
Get yer HGV then and learn the car transporter game, by the time you're up to full skill the shortage will be serious and the money will be there again on the better companies....some on that game earn comfortably over that and have for years, some really lucky ones earned just under that in the late 80's.
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Crumbs, is that right? You may be on to something, gb.
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Looks a tough job to me, the transporters. Clambering about in all weathers when yer knees are creaking.
The sludge gulper looks a lot steadier for a mature chap, and I suppose you'll get used to the fragrance.
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I lived down a sceptic tank for nigh-on a hole year about 7 years ago.
Not the main chamber where the escritura (as my ole brother used to call it) but the 2nd chamber that holds the, um, liquid.
The soakaway was blocked (I found out after buying the house) and I spent a small fortune on the suck out merchants.
Trouble was caused by previous peeps chucking fat down the sink for 20 years, I sorted it in the end just before we moved to Truro but, every time anyone visited me during the day or when the ole woman came home from work, all they would see of me was my head sticking out above the tank.
I became a bit-of-an ex spurt about blimmin septic tanks after that episode :(
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>> The sludge gulper looks a lot steadier for a mature chap, and I suppose you'll
>> get used to the fragrance.
>>
You have a point there MT, oddly enough there's a goodly number of us ex trannies?! on the tankers now, its become a standing joke.
Anyway AV's only a pup, he's got years before his joints sound like mine...and don't put him off yet, you always earn £50k sat on yer bum drinking tea and stuffing bacon sarnies down yer neck -;)
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Why GB, would it pay so well I ponder
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Hi MD.
Specialised skilled but very hard work, filthy and you get hurt often, lots of lorry drivers have trained but few make it through and even fewer still are doing the job after even a few weeks, nothing wrong with them its simply not for everyone.
Companies have tried to cheapen it over the years and employ the usual suspects, it never works, damage goes off the scale....some companies undercut too much to get the work and go bankrupt shortly after, the job simply cannot be done on the cheap.
Best jobs as with every industry are unionised.
Last edited by: gordonbennet on Thu 20 Jun 13 at 20:49
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>>Best jobs as with every industry are unionised<<
Rubbish!
The best jobs in any industry are those with firms who don't need a Union, firms who value their workers, keep them on in another capacity when they lose their licence.
They may not pay tip top wages but money isn't everything. Job retention when off sick for a long period, being treated like a human being, not just a payroll number.
Firms where an employees length of service and loyalty are valued do actually still exist, but only for those of us who can see past the £ signs.
Pat
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For once I think Pat is spot on.
To receive something more than £, typically you have to offer a little more also.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Thu 20 Jun 13 at 21:39
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>> To receive something more than £, typically you have to offer a little more also.
Like Comrade Stakhanov, the hero of the Soviet Union who worked extra hours for the triumph of socialism...
'Onward, ever onward to the overfulfilment of the five year plan!'
I bet he was popular with his colleagues. Often wondered, if he existed, what happened to him. Did he survive to get the Dacha, the Zil and the allowance?
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>>Best jobs as with every industry are unionised<<
Rubbish!
I thought you were on holiday Pat (holding everyone up with your 'van). Calm down, relax and enjoy yourself!
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Message clear and understood. Thanks. Roger, over and out.
Now, to make her a cuppa.............or else.
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>> There's a website called "ratemypoo" for that sort of thing. I advise you not to
>> go there though. The "ratemyboobs" one is far better ;)
>>
Another choice website is Ratemyboner ( Ahem ).....that will lead you to ' Helicopter decapitations ' . All good clean fun !
I've experienced the German ' Turd shelf ' bogs many times and the Greeks, where you put the paper in a bin instead of flushing it away., making the room stink.
Worse, IMO, are the French ' stand up with a foot each side of the hole in the floor ' Use of these usually meant yer strides and underkex swimming about in someone else's pee ! Nice !
First experience was on a campsite in Benodet sur Mere. Whole family horrified until we found a door with just one ' Cludgie Anglais ' inside !
Ted
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Not a tank but a pit.
A reminder of Blaster Bates telling all ...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbZsVd7j7l4
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Not quite sure how rate my boner gets linked to 'helicopter decapitations'.... I don't want to know......
The attached link provides a few laughs
www.youtube.com/watch?v=88mfiChXzL4
Last edited by: helicopter on Wed 19 Jun 13 at 15:44
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When I was a child the man who came to empty the septic tank used to come back round later in the week with his fruit and veg van selling produce from his market garden.
I remember my parents being slightly discomfited by that despite having no evidence of there being any connection between his two businesses but having to admit that his cabbages were really very good...
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>> but having to admit that his cabbages were
>> really very good...
Well it's a very efficient business with virtually all of the waste products recycled. Did he used to tap the methane from your parents after eating the cabbages?
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IN the sixties you use to be able to buy a fertiliser called "Dagfert" which was composted human waste from Dagenham sewage works.
I remember by Dad bought some for the veg plot. There were lots of tomatoes seedlings that year as tomato seeds can pass through the human digestive system unharmed.
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>>IN the sixties you use to be able to buy a fertiliser called "Dagfert"
You're pulling our plonkers CG, I 'Binged' Dagfert and came up with Dogfart (oops!)
:}
Last edited by: Dog on Wed 19 Jun 13 at 19:58
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>> >>IN the sixties you use to be able to buy a fertiliser called "Dagfert"
>>
>> You're pulling our plonkers CG
>>
>> :}
No he isn't.
Halifax used to sell Organifax, which was rebranded by somebody with a sense of humour as "Yorkshire Bounty" when Yorkshire Water came into being.
Subject of a Parliamentary 'motion' and referred to here - subject
hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1984/nov/26/sewage-treatment-sites
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>>No he isn't.
I cee'd it on Dunc's link.
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>> >>No he isn't.
>>
>> I cee'd it on Dunc's link.
It took me a long time to post that - I digressed into reading Hansard which was quite funny.
Last edited by: Manatee on Wed 19 Jun 13 at 21:14
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S'okay friend, I do actually use Google mainly, + Chrome.
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I do a search for Dagfert on Google, and it comes up with Dagfert
I do the same on Bing, and it comes up with Dogfart which is one awful site!
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Tells you all you need to know about "Bing"
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Crazy! - there's no sign of 'the other' site via a Google search for Dagfert.
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>> IN the sixties you use to be able to buy a fertiliser called "Dagfert" which
>> was composted human waste from Dagenham sewage works.
Scroll down to "Public Services".
www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=42732
Last edited by: Duncan on Wed 19 Jun 13 at 20:58
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Dagfert is nowhere near as good a name as Yorkshire Bounty.
They could have called it Essex Ex...never mind.
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I used to like Bounty bars. I thought they were chocolate ;-)
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>> Not quite sure how rate my boner gets linked to 'helicopter decapitations'....
Chopper.
It came up once (if you pardon the expression) in a Carry On Film.
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Unprocessed human waste as fertiliser is frowned on in the West, but I thought it was standard practice among small Chinese cultivators, anyway in some areas. Waste not want not, a sound principle really.
Even so given what ordinary silage smells like sometimes I'm glad I don't live in one or those bits of China.
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>> Unprocessed human waste as fertiliser is frowned on in the West, but I thought it
>> was standard practice among small Chinese cultivators, anyway in some areas.
Correct AC, I read this when I did an OU course on world sustainability. Like the rest of the world, the Chinese population is moving away from agricultural areas and into the cities for want of a better life, but no doubt it will bring its own problems.
I'm sure it used to happen here, and the collectors were rather well paid.
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The 'night soil' collectors iirc. Better than tipping it straight into the street a la Edmund Blackadder (Series 2, Episode 'Money' refers)
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Chinese market gardeners in Malaysia used to mix the raw product about 50% with water and pour along the planted rows. The vegetables were beautiful but it was advisable to rinse them in Milton solution before cooking as intestinal parasites were rife.
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>> It came up once (if you pardon the expression) in a Carry On Film.
That would be Carry On Henry. Middling to poor in my view, that one.
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>>Middling to poor in my view
Did you mean midden?
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>> That would be Carry On Henry.
Pretty sure it was Carry on Dick. IIRC, Kenneth Williams was trying to describe to the rector that Dick Turpin could be identified as he had a mole (or birthmark, can't fully remember) on his chopper. The rector didn't think it was the local forester as he was the only one he knew that had an axe.
Last edited by: VxFan on Thu 20 Jun 13 at 10:19
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I'd forgotten that one, and actually that one is slightly better than Henry, so no excuse.
No surprise if the "joke" was used multiple times though.
The thing I like about the Carry Ons, and indeed all those terrible British films, is not their content, but the spotting of the paraphernalia from the time - the Triumph Spitfire, the Omo on the shelf, the New Radiant electric cookers, that kind of thing. We saw one the other day that had some seriously funky seventies sofa cushions, and Mrs C copied the pattern down to have a go, although it was tricky to see them properly with that Jacki Piper lounging about on them in her underwear.
Very retro it will be I'm sure.
Sorry for the thread drift.
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When I had one, always used to make the guy a bacon sandwich. He also had a dynorod thing on the back of his truck that he was supposed to charge £100 for, but he used it for me once, and I gave him a drink. Great guy.
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>> >> That would be Carry On Henry.
King Henry.......' Right, I'm off to the palace '
Courtier........ ' Hampton Court ?'
Henry.... 'No, I always walk like this '
Great classical lines !
Ted
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A customer of mine has to pump his septic tank occasionally during the winter as the outfall has collapsed. He pumps it to a corner of his garden and the trees, the wild flowers and indeed all other vegetation has flourished beyond normal means. Absolutely incredible growing rates especially where the trees are concerned.
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>> ....the wild flowers and indeed all other vegetation has flourished beyond normal means.
>> Absolutely incredible growing rates especially where the trees are concerned.
probably trying to get away from the smell.....
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Rather them than me - CGNorwich
