Collette Image and object

Title: Reading pipes as partners. Descriptive heading:Plumbing paying in the currency of lovers

As many people know, lovers are forever becoming but never really become, because to be a lover is to present a potential.

The worst term to call your lover at a party is your other half. This is not only because obliterates any notion of you as a functioning whole, but because it is an exposing division of the self, in front of a room full of people.

A Pedestal Straight Through Trap is plumbing in a deep embrace. In my mind, it pays with the same currency as Constantin Brancusi’s 1913 sculpture The Kiss. Its pipes cradle each curve intimately, it’s architecture presenting an enamoured and carnal clinch. Whenever you next stoop beneath the sink, I defy you not to blush.

Its design exists to stop regurgitation, and separate you from the impassioned odours of the problem we produce: waste. The trap is useless without its partner, (water), which simply by being present within the U bend and activated by the push of a flush, provides a barrier for the waste’s gases, (which wish to re-enter and horrify the nostrils of those who scorned and banished them to the drains in the first place).

When large contributions of waste matter gather in the sewers there are few units of language that accurately acknowledge or represent the gestational act of their formation. The words ‘blockage’, ‘clog' and ‘plug’ are unsuitable as they employ the negative, each a hindrance of process and productivity. 'Mass' is better, as it suggests a convening of agreeable independents to form a gratifying whole. The term 'Fatberg' is the finale in naming what is pulled from the drains. Fatberg is a brute that requires a baptism.

Look again at the image. The pedestal trap is two lovers, lost in each other arms. Their kiss protects you at the very point at which mankind disassociates from waste (the plughole). Thus, we should be mindful: every time you use the sink, you are third wheeling