A sound like a champagne cork made of mud. The entire contents of the pipe—two years of roof debris, the tennis ball, and what looked like a fossilised squirrel—shot out of the bottom into Gladys’s waiting bucket.

She fetched a plunger. Not a toilet plunger—a heavy-duty drain plunger with a rubber cone. She sealed it over the bottom outlet of the downpipe. "Now go upstairs," she said, "and pour a bucket of hot water down the top."

He grabbed three tools: a wire coat hanger, a bucket, and his mother-in-law’s best knitting needle (she was on holiday. Probably).