This is what our garden looked like a week ago.  Everybody in the street was merrily excreting and we were reaping the consequences.  As you can see, the garden is under 3 inches or so of water, toilet paper and poo.  A man came round at 8am on Saturday morning to put a camera down the drain.  We heard nothing, which we thought a little odd, but assumed the landlady would call us Monday morning.  Instead, when I am eating my toast with a towel on my head, I hear a little knock on the dining room window.  There is drain man, large as life, about to dig up our garden!!  JT asked if there was any chance of ascertaining what was actually wrong and drain man said that a tree root has grown through the pipe, thus blocking the entire system.  He is digging up the offending root this morning, repairing the pipe and then no doubt leaving our garden looking like a building site.

When I left this morning he was in a hole in the ground.  Merry Christmas.