Here's to my infallible nose

The previous post here dealt with house re-wiring and subsequent comments raised the subject of its legality when done by an amateur. Rather than appear to endorse the practice I pressed Delete. My thanks to Plutarch, Zhoen and Marja-Leena who responded and whose comments I have also deleted.

MORE CULPA MEA It seems only fair to replace it with another story where I ended up with egg on my face. So let’s start with my sense of smell and its sibling, taste. Both are well enough developed to identify why I dislike Beaujolais and certain red Loire wines (the Gamay grape), to predict the inherent disappointment in many petit chateau Bordeaux (excessive tannin) and to celebrate the emergence of the pinot noir all over the world without for a moment confusing it with the grape’s greatest expression in Burgundy.

But the application of smell/taste frequently depends on context. And pride, as they say…. A few days after we moved into our present house we discovered an unpleasant smell in the bathroom, seemingly coming from the toilet. The builder’s jack-of-all-trades was called in, used putty to seal the toilet/sewer junction and performed other stabs in the dark. The smell remained.

My daughter phoned and I mentioned the problem. What about the recently laid carpet? she said. Couldn’t be that I said; it’s something to do with poo. But once the phone was back in the cradle I stole upstairs and bent low. It was the carpet! The toilet (It’s so easy to give a toilet a bad name.) was blameless. And I felt like a complete prat.