Recently we discovered that our toilet, like many, many things in our home has been fitted wrongly. It was attached not to a cold water pipe, but a hot one. Every time we flushed the loo, we activated the boiler and filled our cistern with expensive hot water.

The man who lived here before us was a bit of a numpty. He honestly thought he was capable of tackling every problem. The truth was that he wasn’t skilled enough or qualified enough or careful enough for most of the jobs he took on. Even his best efforts to do something (grouting, tiling, electrics, plumbing, brick work) don’t make the grade. In some cases his work is dangerous and in all cases, costly to put right. He has also, unaccountably, filled many of our walls with bags of rubbish. Old loo rolls, tissues, bills and newspapers pointlessly fill the cavities like some kind of time capsule left by a service station bathroom attendant with a mean grudge against his employer.

Hope Road’s previous owner was, I hope, utterly unaware of his lack of skill. Perhaps he thought that he was doing us, the next owners, a favour? Perhaps he thought that his rubbish would never be discovered? He was, as history shows us, wrong on both counts. I would have preferred a toilet that did not flush at all, and walls that were not filled with things that needed burning.

When we try to reach God on our own terms we find that even our best efforts will never make the grade. We can strive and work as hard as we can, but we will never have the qualifications necessary. There will always be rubbish hidden in the walls. And of course we are not trained to tackle the biggest problem we have, that of our total inability to see we have a problem at all.

Jon and I decided to remove the ailing toilet altogether and replace it with a utility area where we can wash and dry our clothes. When our kitchen fitter came to finish the oak flooring in there yesterday, he did not have enough wood. There was just one more plank needed. He eventually found the rather battered plank he had used to knock in all of the other pieces for the kitchen floor. It was the ‘sacrificial’ lamb of the job. It had already taken all the punishment of his very strong arm in order to lay down the rest of our flooring. It seems more than fitting (pun intentional) that this piece now forms the corner of our washing room.

Doesn’t that remind you of a very good and very true story you know?

(All the artwork above has been made from recycled toilet rolls. My fave is the blue face on the far right.)