I took Joseph after school to a joint 4th birthday party, the usual pattern of 30 or so kids running around screaming at each other for 2 hours, whilst I sat trying my hardest not to eat the bad carb fest that was the buffet. Joseph was starting to come down with something so was taking oversensitivity to a whole new level and spent the entire time alternating between unnecessary tears or trying to wrestle a football off Alex or Jordi, or in some cases of sheer stupidity, one of the older boys (I shall be so pleased when the boys finally realise that football is not actually a solitary game and the more people who play it, the better). Finally after the cake, came the sign that the party was drawing its last dying breaths, the piñata appeared. Job done and off we ski-daddled homeward bound. There was a bottle of white rioja in the fridge with my name on it.
We entered our apartment lobby and were headed towards the lift when I was aware of some dripping down the stairs, I climbed the stairs to have a look and saw that water was cascading down from the floor above. Our floor! There were 4 apartments that the water could have been coming from but I knew immediately that it was ours. We exited the lift to find the whole of our landing under water and it was, of course, gushing out from under our door. I ran into our apartment, thinking 'shit, oh fuck, I've left a tap on' and frantically ran around checking all the taps, none of which were on, when our next door neighbour appeared. I manically beckoned him in and he discovered the burst pipe under the kitchen sink. I shooed Joseph upstairs out of the way, mainly for his safety but also for the sake of my sanity as he was screaming and crying, obviously upset because I was flapping around like a headless chicken. I went to fetch a chair for our neighbour to stand on so he could reach the valve to turn the water off when I slipped in the water and went arse over tit. I went crashing over, landing awkwardly on my knees and completely drenching myself in the process. Joseph, perched halfway up the stairs then went into full hysteria, screaming 'it's raining, Mummy fell over, it's raining, Mummy is hurting' over and over again.
Thankfully, the water was shut off and a whole host of neighbours (some of whom I swear I'd never seen before) suddenly appeared armed with mops, brushes and buckets and began to help remove 5 inches of standing water from my home. At some point, a rather bemused t'husband arrived home and was duly handed a mop and told to get to work.
Miraculously the only thing that was damaged was a copy of the book Lovely Bones which had been on the floor by the side of the bed and even that is almost dry now. I am sporting two huge bruises on my knees and I was in quite a bit of pain on Saturday as I must have twisted my knee quite badly when I fell. On the positive side, the under the sink cleaning cupboard has now been cleaned out, a job that I have been procrastinating over for about 3 years and lots of bits of random fluff and dust that you need to move furniture to get to has now been flushed out, one more job off the spring cleaning list.
I now know that I have fabulous neighbours, although I would rather they hadn't witnessed me flailing around on the floor, flapping about in the water like some demented salmon, I'm sure my dignity will recover in time. And finally I am quite thankful that it happened last Friday and not this coming Friday when t'husband will be in England on a stag do. All in all, it could have been a lot worse.
