I’d like to present story time with Jennifer. I’m being honest, I’ve felt guilty about what happened for years and want to finally come clean. Message to all the plumbers in Melbourne, drain replacement can be risky and this one’s a cautionary tale. Well, cautionary tale for people in need of your services. I should just get on with the story.

So, let’s talk about the drain replacement incident. Mum and Dad were out a lot when I was younger. Sometimes Dad would take me to school if he didn’t have an early morning meeting, but that was rare. Anyway, I was a proper latchkey kid, and I got used to it. We didn’t have the dogs back then, so I was all alone in the house. Well, except for Courtney my hamster. I loved little furry things, which is when I discovered…the colony.

We had a converted the loft space into a luxurious bathroom for my mother, so I used to go up there and have imaginary adventures.

That was when I discovered the family of possums living above the drain pipes. More of a colony, because I wasn’t able to count how many of them there were. There was a small hole, which is how they came and went, and they seemed to be treating our bathroom like their home.

Anyway, I started feeding them, because they were cute and fluffy. They eventually grew to know me, because I was small and non-threatening. And at some point, I decided that more of them needed to come in. Using a cricket bat, I went up to the bathroom one day and tried to make the hole above the pipes bigger. I wanted every possum in Melbourne to know that they were welcome! And that’s when the water came rushing in. I had destroyed a drain pipe.

Dinner that night was interrupted by a steady dripping from the upper floor. Water was pouring from the loft entrance. Dad opened the door and nearly got washed away, because someone had made a coffee-table-sized hole in the roof. Anyway, dad rushed away to call someone who could handle the emergency drain repair. Melbourne was forecast for bad weather for the following week so we needed those repairs fast. Funnily enough, the possums vacated. To this day, mother and father do not know it was my fault.