I put my bunch of keys on the shelf, which is situated at loo seat height next to the loo.
I stood up to flush, and in the act of flushing, managed to dislodge the keys off the shelf and into the loo
As fast as I realised it had happened, they'd gone
I went in and told the base op, who looked horrified and asked me what I meant by "gone", so I repeated that the keys had flushed down the loo.
I ran through my list of options - going home for the spare was not an option as the 406 had never had a spare to my knowledge, i'd not even been given the security card. So the first thing I could think of was to ring a plumber.
Then the base op pointed out that he had a set of plumbing rods and he could possibly rod the bunch of keys out for me.
I gratefully accepted the offer, thinking they couldn't have got that far, surely?
So off home he trotted, and duly came back with his rods and set to work.
Fifteen minutes later he came up stinking like a cesspit and informed me there were at least three manhole covers and all of them were full to the brim with backed up sh*t. In fact, they'd probably never been rodded in all the time the property had been there (at least 100 years).
So back downstairs he went, and set about rodding out the main one which led out of the property. He'd already lifted the cover and had found the distance between the cover and the backed up crap to be about 10 inches. As he rodded it, that went down to FIVE FOOT
Still no sign of any keys.
Then he set about rodding the next cover down, the first being in front of the property, situated in front of the alley gate, the second was at the back of the property down the alley under the house. This was also backed up, but as it got rodded, turned out to be only 2-3 foot full of crap
He rang me and asked me to flush the ladies, to help with finding which pipe was the right one, and as I did so, a tiny trickle came out of one of the pipes in this particular outlet.
I popped downstairs to take a look and he showed me where it was and explained that hopefully if he rodded the pipe from this end, when I flushed the chain the next time, my keys would hopefully appear with the flow.
So he rodded, then I flushed.
Nothing. Zilch. Zip. No bloody keys.
So he opened another cover further into the back garden to make sure there was no other place they could have entered into.
He rodded it for good measure until this one too was almost empty of crap.
By this time the day shift were coming in, Twiggy in particular.
It has often been joked that the funny smell at 5am is not the sewers backed up, but Twiggy's abnormal desire to go every morning, not in his own toilet at home, but in the men's one at work. For a crap.
It was no laughing matter when as the base op was explaining that he thought this particular outlet was from the men's loo, we saw a light go on upstairs, followed by a loud fart. A couple of minutes later, we heard a flush and Mister fecking Hanky flew past at Mach 10
I had no idea what to do next, save for the fact that I had no coat, no house key and no car key
The base op kindly lent me his Passat for the day, and I managed to get in the house, get a coat and get back up to work, whereupon I rang a "24 hr" plumber.
He promised to be there within an hour. An hour and a half later he hadn't turned up.
He finally did arrive and I explained what had happened, how the base op had rodded everything but still no keys. The guy didn't look impressed. In fact, if I'm honest, he didn't look like a plumber either. He was an asian lad, immaculately dressed and turned up in a posh black nissan warrior type pickup and then proceeded to take the tiniest plastic toolbox out of it I've ever seen. After explaining he charged £105 + vat an hour, he told me if the keys had gone down the pipe then there was no way in hell of getting them back. As the outlet ran vertically down the wall, I asked if there was any chance he could drop the bottom section of pipe off to see if they were sat at the bottom of the pipe where it goes into the concrete. He said no way.
We went upstairs to the ladies, whereupon he gingerly examined the toilet. He told me my only hope was that they were in the back of the U bend or at worst, just past the loo and in the pipe before it made its way out of the wall. He suggested taking the toilet off to check and I agreed.
He undid one screw by hand, then grunted with the other three and told me there was no way he could remove the toilet. I asked him if it was possible to use an electric screwdriver, but he assured me that the screws were so rusty that he'd end up breaking the toilet.
Then he suggested he SMASH each corner off the toilet to remove it and then afterwards I'd have to replace the toilet!!!
I refused, so he left, taking £25 of my money with him
I knew I should have bloody called Homeserve..
So I left work and went to Mum's, as the pug was parked on 2 hour maximum stay council run parking and I needed to make sure it wasn't going to get ticketed.
I rang Peugeot about getting a key and was told it would take 4 days to order a new key in, the car would have to be towed to the main dealer so they could programme the plip to the ECU.
Like I was going to wait 4 days....
Mum rang my sister's boyfriend, who works for Peugeot to see if he could get one quicker. He told us he'd been quoted 2 weeks
We went on the internet and found a locksmith who reckoned he could do it for £170 that afternoon, so I booked him.
Then he rang back to say none of the places he bought his spares from had the Pug plip in stock, he could still do the job but it would be just a normal key and also he'd got a few emergencies on and couldn't get out until late afternoon.
So I decided to get the car recovered to my house for two reasons, one because it was still parked on council parking and two, I'd had some serious problems with someone at work recently and as he was due in at 6pm I decided not to tempt fate and have it still parked there when he came in, in case something happened to it
I duly explained to the call centre geek what had happened, waited whilst he told his colleagues, friends, aunty Flo from across the water and his internet buddies and finally he told me they'd be out in an hour. I thought I'd best point out that the recovery would need to be done by a scissor lift vehicle with skates, as obviously the car was locked and the steering lock was on, although the steering was straight.
He put me on hold whilst he talked to some more colleagues, then came back on and informed me that the RAC only have normal patrol vehicles, and that they would have to book a private breakdown and that it would cost me an extra £80 + vat
To say I was fecked off was an understatement.
I went to Mum's and explained and as I was browsing the 'Net, found a local locksmiths, based 15 miles away that claimed to be able to replace the key.
I rang them and they said they could be out within the hour, although the price was steeper ( £235 ).
I decided I would cancel the first guy and book these instead, as getting the car home before 6pm was rapidly becoming a priority and £100 tow + £170 key was dearer than getting the car done in 2 hours for £235.
So I sat at Mums and waited.
An hour and a half later and still no phone call, so Mum rang them to be told that we'd already cancelled
The guy on the other end had got his wires crossed and thought another woman ringing up to cancel cos she'd found her keys, was me.
So after straightening that out, they told us a guy was on his way.
I went to wait at work, and finally a guy turned up at 4.30pm.
He showed me the new plip to make sure it was the same as my old one and I confirmed it was.
Out of curiosity I asked him where he got the plip and blade from. He told me Peugeot main dealer Coventry
(So it's only obviously a 4 day wait if you're not trade then).
So as he'd already cut the key (I forgot to mention I'd already bought the codes from Peugeot a year ago - little did I think I'd need them at the time), he inserted it into the driver's door lock and hey presto, the door opened. And on went the alarm.
And on.
And on.
He tried to program the plip to no avail, I was sat in the passenger seat and was reading his programming manual over his shoulder when I noticed in small letters at the bottom of the 406 page about re-synchronising the plip by disconnecting the battery for one minute.
It rang a few bells from when my battery went flat a year ago and I'd changed the battery and the plip wouldn't work, so I suggested it to him but was told that we weren't trying to re-synchronise the plip, we were programming the plip to the ECU.
In the end, he was looking at the dome in front of the switches for the interior lights and he said to me that the "dome" was the infra red and he'd got the wrong plip. I said he'd definitely got the right one, and he asked me if the old one had had a small bulb in it and I said no, it was identical to the one in his hand.
He rang the main dealers in Coventry and explained that he'd been down that day and got the plip, but that it was the wrong plip and could they check the part numbers? Then he rang his boss and explained that the part numbers matched, the only other number Peugeot had was for the normal key wothout plip.
So in desperation he rang Peugeot and spoke to a technician. Who told him to disconnect the battery for one minute.
With that done, it took seconds and apart from the huge hole in my pocket and the lack of sleep, no real harm done.
Not an experience I'd wish to repeat though....
N.B. I was chatting to the base op about the old keys and he was scratching his head, telling me he's still sure they're in one of the pits before each outlet (he told me they put pits in to catch any rings or valuables before they went down the main drain forever, never to be seen again) when he gave me an idea.
Watch this space, I'm charging up my metal detector as I type, I may find my old bunch yet.......
I will have to look to get some spares for mine I think
. I know I shouldn't laugh and all that..... 
