I was reading an article about alien abduction the other day. I've always been a great lover of science fiction, despite having a slightly cynical nature (never, I hear you cry) and I can never resist such tales, however far fetched.

You know the sort of thing. A middle aged hairdresser from Wisconsin or a pig farmer from Ohio is whisked off in the middle of the night by a strange craft and large lights, have bits of their anatomy removed with or without anaesthetic and are then dumped unceremoniously back into their vehicles where they realise six hours have passed and all they have to show for it is a monster headache

Occasionally they remember that as well as having skin snippings removed they were interrogated about human technology and advanced science.

I'd like to believe them. Most of us would like to believe there is something out 'there'. But every time I read such accounts one word springs into my mind. Why?

Why would any beings who are presumably advanced enough to have discovered interstellar flight and the ability to travel at more than the speed of light, and managed to evade having their picture taken by the sort of people who haunt the rest of us with camcorders and cameras need the bodily fluids of a Wisconsin hairdresser?

And why dump them afterwards? Presumably if you were carrying out a bit of illegal sample taking the last thing you would want is an hysterical witness.

Actually the last thing they would want would be me. Because although I could no doubt spare a few samples, I could tell them absolutely nothing about human technology and advanced science.

I couldn't explain one tiny thing about how anything works. I can use new technology. I can turn things on (well nearly always). I can even on occasions work out that things don't work if you haven't plugged them in. But how they really work - no.

This preamble is all because we have been having a problem with the downstairs loo.

It started with a small leak and just sort of multiplied into a major disaster owing to the age of the convenience (only about 25 years but things move fast in the lavatory furnishings department so it seems).

Broken loo

Yes, we could have called a plumber but fortunately my son-in-law solved the inconvenient convenience. I should add that this is the reason why a white porcelain slightly broken loo is now standing in the front garden, in case anyone passing by should wonder. My suggestion that I plant primulas in it was not well received.

While this was going on I realised yet again I have absolutely no idea how the seemingly simple great British lavatory works. No idea at all. It's as much a mystery to me as the theory of evolution.

Actually, Einstein probably didn't know how a lavatory works either, few of us do.

For most of our lives we just flush and leave.We don't have to tangle with soil pipes and close coupling and, dare I say it in a family newspaper, ballcocks.

I do seem to remember that at school one teacher did give us a few lessons on the inventions that changed the world. Rather unwisely, however, he mentioned that the Victorian inventor of the loo was called Crapper and after the resultant hysteria in the class never brought the subject up again.

I blame it on genes, actually. I come from a family of DIY duffers. My father was not known as the clock destroyer for nothing. Nobody in the family would ever dare to mention their watch was losing a few seconds, lest it ended up in the timepiece graveyard in the top drawer, joining all the other non-ticking tickers in a tangled mess.

My grandmother had a theory that anything electrical could be goaded into going again if you gave it a swift kick.

Which probably explained why our modest number of electrical appliances usually had at least one dent.

It's just as well she didn't live to see the electronic age with masses of machines which wouldn't take kindly to the application of a size four leather lace-up.

But back to plumbing. We are now in possession of a fully working hybrid lavatory, mainly because the five bits which were needed to get it back to work again came from five different places, and we didn't have to call a plumber.

My favourite plumbing story happened when my children were teenagers and I received a telephone call at work from one of them saying 'I think Dad's killed the plumber'.

This is not the sort of telephone call you really need when you are in the process of rushing towards a deadline and it took all my calm, unflustered character to deal with. I screamed 'what the hell do you mean' and took a taxi home.

It transpired that my husband, finding the wash basin in the bathroom blocked, had tipped a goodly measure of caustic soda down it, which didn't work.

Before he left for work he rang a friend who did a bit of plumbing, but failed to mention the soda.

The friend eventually arrived, undid the waste pipe and for reasons never fully explained, sucked it to, he said later, remove an airblock. All he got was a mouthful of caustic soda.

My children described the next few moments in succinct detail. Firstly the sound of gagging, and slightly muffled cursing. Next a dash for the garden and louder sounds of both gagging and cursing and a croaked request for water. This followed by excessive spitting and some very nasty words indeed and one of my daughters deciding perhaps she had better ring me. "All the hair came off his hands, Mum', they told me when I finally got home.

There was no signs of the plumber. Only an empty jug on the patio table, several dead petunias which had been caustic soda'd to death, and a still blocked sink with an open waste pipe.

My husband tentatively rang to find out how he was, bald hands and all, and there was an exchange of opinions about stupid people who pour caustic soda down wastepipes and even stupidier people who suck waste pipes.

The sink got its own back though.

One of the children went into the bathroom later that night and turned on the hot tap, left for a few moments (childspeak for half an hour) and the blockage miraculously unblocked itself and flooded the floor.