Bring back the ballcock!!

Over the Christmas period the landlord's trusty toilet cistern finally surrendered to old age and refused to flush. The management agent was duly summoned and a replacement instructed to be fitted. Within hours the new device had developed the ability to whistle, a feat that it mastered soon after. Within weeks its skills had transcended those of a virtuoso.

The performances post New Year increased in length, varied in pitch and occurred at irregular intervals whenever the toilet had been flushed. From a mild irritant at the outset this odious noise soon became the bane of both my wife's and my lives. All we could do was flush the loo and wait for the noise to 'erupt' as the water cascaded into the tank. First the rumble in the pipes, then the dripping / gushing of water, followed by the inevitable whistle. The annoying aspect was that it was impossible to predict when it would happen. Sometimes the whistling would occur within 2 to 5 minutes. On occasions nothing would happen for up to an hour. There were even days when nothing would happen, then suddenly you would be woken by the shrill whistling at 2 o'clock in the morning for no apparent reason. Invariably it was difficult to stop, normally resulting in frantically plunging my hands into the freezing cold water and re-seating the flap while trying to stem the inlet flow.

It took 3 visits from a plumber, and 6 weeks before the situation was resolved.

It was with a deep sense of dismay that I looked at the 'gubbins' inside the tank for the first time. My mother used to tell me of the mischievous joy she felt whenever the topic of conversation at school made mention of parent's chosen professions. As a supplier of sanitaryware to the building trade, she took great pride in announcing to her year 3 classmates that her father 'travelled in toilets'. Quite what my grandfather would have made of the said 'gubbins' in the modern bathroom I hesitate to think.

He had retired by the time I had started school but I can well remember his house festooned by all variety of strange looking appliances (not everyone's idea of wall hangings). Coloured ballcocks, valves, tools and fittings of every shape and size, just one of his many eccentricities.

As for the ghastly contraption that had been placed inside our tank, the source of the dreaded whistle, it was horrid and I suggested to the management agent that the plumber had found it in a Christmas cracker. It looked like the rubber baby's shaker that I used to beat my brother over the head with. It made a similar noise, too (the shaker not my brother's head – he just made burbling noises; then, he still does).

Little could flush toilet pioneer, Thomas Twyford, expanding on the work of J. G. Jennings, have anticipated that his wonderful brass fittings would evolve into a float of opaque moulded plastic, smaller than a tennis ball, a flap the size of a tea strainer and a filler pipe that looks more like a discarded condom.

I am not a sentimentalist, nor do I share my grandfather's taste in wall hangings but there is a certain amount of reassurance to be gained knowing that Mr. Twyford's original designs have been around since the 1880s whereas the modern replacements would appear to have a lifespan of no more than 2 years.