Here's my entry for your competition 'Tales from the Riverbank' It makes me giggle every time I think about it - it's probably a personal thing!
Recently married, my wife and me decided to share a weeks boating holiday on the Norfolk Broads with my new in-laws. Brother-in-law enamoured himself to me immediately.
Shortly after leaving the boatyard in Oulton Broad, he managed to steer us over some semi-submerged stakes - thankfully not holing the boat. Better was to come. We tied up, after a fashion, for the evening and headed to the local hostelry for food and drink. That is with the exception of brother-in-law who announced that he would follow on after freshening up in the shower. When he hadn't shown up 40 minutes later, and heavily prompted by the rest of the ravenous crew, I returned to the boat to see what was keeping him. I found him on his hands and knees scooping water with a cup from the flooded shower-cum-toilet compartment into a washing-up bowl before dispatching it down the sink. The main body of the boat was strewn with wet bath towels to soak up the water that had spilled out of the shower/toilet. When I'd finished laughing at him, he explained, "I've had one hell of a mess to deal with. It just wouldn't drain away." He was close tears. So was I! In his attempts to clean the plug-hole (a blocked plughole being his diagnosis of the problem), he had removed a holiday-season's worth of 'body' hairs from the plughole with his bare hands, to no avail.
The following morning, when we were on the verge of calling our boatyard to report the 'problem', mother-in-law, who was performing her ablutions, discovered a small button on the shower/toilet wall. "I wonder what this is for?", she said, as the shower pump whirred into motion.
Kind regards,
Malcolm Stiff