Scatological or what?

My beloved uncle, now sadly 'late' in the Mma Ramotswe sense and whose name was 'Brown', used to say that 'Browns' weather' plagued his every holiday.  He went to Greece, Pakistan, just down the road to Hastings, and you could guarantee that it would be cold and wet, not just for him but for us at home too.

Husband and I, however, have been pursued by toilets.  Things started the way they meant to go on at our flat in Sutton where we lived immediately after our wedding; a toilet with a pathetic, 'can't be bothered' flush was kicked into action suddenly and literally when Husband got frustrated with it one Sunday afternoon.  I can't remember the details now - too long ago.

Next we went to live in a commuter village east of Guildford, where our daughter and son were born.  With a two week old baby and tearful through lack of sleep, we managed to block the system in the whole road by putting nappy liners down the loo, as it said you could do on the packet.  Our very nice neighbours rodded the drain for us, as we were in no fit state to do it.

At least in these last two places we had mains drainage.  Over twenty years ago now, we moved to our present house where we don't.  The septic tank has, over the years, caused us hours of amusement, embarrassment and expense, especially on Saturday evenings and Sunday evenings, the normal times for crises to occur.  But you came to hold it cheap and love the slurry wagon when it turns up, our visitors too, because septic tank would always hold out until we had company.  Do you suppose that, when you get a group of countrymen together, they discuss crops, nature or the weather, or even incursions from Tesco?  No, they talk about the merits of soak aways and filtration and how putting the village on to the mains would definitely be a BAD THING.

We can't escape, even on holiday.  In Brittany, where our toilette flushed continuously, all day and all night, Madame's response was always 'Demain', and probably still is.  Staying in Tenerife we managed to work our magic on the bathroom facilities in mother-in-law's apartment and had to call out the English-Speaking Plumber from Playa De Los Cristianos.  (He was quite used to people like us.)  Worst of all was southern Italy where the big tank in the basement of our holiday-let for 6 people ran dry, because we had... er, six people... in the property.  The only person from the holiday company who was on site was Mario who only spoke Italian and Husband who spoke none.  They got it fixed though; some basic concepts are international.

Pity most ezines don't do scatological, isn't it?  I think I might just have a bit of material there.  

Things I Should've Known Years Ago...

I've just had a long Eureka moment, lasting for several days.  It's rather embarrassing actually because I've found out something I should've known ages ago.

I've been subbing for about two years and I've been moderately successful, using Duotrope to find ezines to sub to, largely American ones, which take stories featuring very American subject-matter.  I know several British writers who write very specifically for this market, even using Webster spellings.  No one is a bigger fan of Duotrope than I am, but it does tend to represent what American writers want to write - scifi, fantasy, zombies, vampires. 

At the same time... well, over the last few months... I've become a bit of a writing mag junkie ('Writers Forum', 'Mslexia', 'Writers Monthly', 'Leaf Books' although I was just reading the articles - until the last few days.   Dear Reader (if there is one), I have come to love the classifieds at the end, you know, the ones where they list all the competitions.  They're all British and most of them are open genre, so I've been whacking my British-based mainstream stories in there.  It may be that they too favour scifi and fantasy etc and I'm going to be terribly disappointed, but they're not saying so.