Handyman Extraordinary

I just repaired my own cistern.
Last night I was sitting chatting to CK on Messenger, getting increasingly annoyed by the sound of rushing water. "Who's doing that?" I thought. Turned out it was me - the little chain that connects the handle to the release cap to flush the toilet had snapped, leaving the cap open and thus making the toilet flush continuously. Once I closed the cap, of course, this still meant that pulling the handle had no effect.

One of the funny things about moving into a new house - and especially when you move out of your family home for the first time - is that you lack all sorts of tools you never thought about before. Minor kitchen utensils, second tier cleaning products such as silver polish, that sort of thing. You find yourself wandering around your home going "how is it possible we don't have a screwdriver?" Because you always had your parents' toolbox to sift through before.

I found myself in a similar situation here. Last night, after a failed attempt to fix the mechanism with some plastic twine I found in a shoebox left by the previous tenant, I was reduced to flushing the toilet by taking the lid of the cistern and lifting the cap with a coathanger.

Now, a lesser man might have gone running to his landlord for help, but not yours truly. I must admit I was planning to do so, but I happened to go past a hardware store on my way back from the laundry this morning, where I bought a desklamp and went for the long shot of going "you wouldn't have a replacement for one of these chains, would you?" The chains don't seem to come separately, but the guy recognised what I needed right away and sold me a whole replacement cap&chain set for HK$10.

So now I have a functioning toilet again. Granted, it's not pretty in the cistern. The original version had the chain cut to a perfect length, whereas mine is wound round the end of the handle a couple of times to shorten it. But what do you want? I'm a wordsmith, not a certified plumber!