The joy of unblocking

[Pingers]

1. You have a cold (don't worry, it's not the Covid) and one of your nostrils is badly blocked. Grabbing a tissue, you close the other nostril, fill your lungs and pump an heroic amount of air into the blocked one. In one glorious release of pressure, a mass of snot is ejected into the tissue and your airway is instantly clear. Take a deep, long breath through your nose.

2. You are backed up. You feel listless, like an alien baby is couched in your colon, sucking away your life force. You have this feeling you are supposed to be somewhere else, doing something else. You traipse up to the bathroom, more in vague hope than expectation, ready for failure. A lot of straining is required, an epic tussle ensues. It's like The Old Man and the Sea. You begin to prepare yourself for surrender - after all, it's important to pick your battles. One last push and the beast crowns, and - glory of glories - a hard head gives way to a soft body. You've won! A poisonous sea snake pours itself into the bowl, you spend delirious minutes panting in victory, the sensation of your bowel contracting washes calmly through you.

3. Having spent yourself and ejected the foul worm, you wipe thoroughly and flush. If you're honest, you should have flushed then wiped, and your error rushes to meet you as the mix of shit, paper and water rises ominously to the top of the pan. You brace yourself, willing against the horror of overspill, a toilet Knut. Then, at the 11th hour, a miracle. The water levels, you eye each other for moments surely suspended in time, then something shifts at the base and the debris plummets, a whirlpool of sewage sucked into the depths, gone in a blink, the u-bend momentarily dry, like you've been afforded a glimpse of another world, before the placid waters of normality return just as quickly. Everything is empty and calm.

What is it about unblocking that is so, so satisfying?

[Dex Sawash]

Unblocked you so I could read that. Joyous.

[Replies From View]

1. You have a cold (don't worry, it's not the Covid) and one of your nostrils is badly blocked. Grabbing a tissue, you close the other nostril, fill your lungs and pump an heroic amount of air into the blocked one. In one glorious release of pressure, a mass of snot is ejected into the tissue and your airway is instantly clear. Take a deep, long breath through your nose.

Actually, doing this creates a massive nosebleed so you have to hang your head over the bathroom sink for an hour and waste an entire kitchen roll.

Game over!

[Pingers]

Unblocked you so I could read that. Joyous.

Had you really blocked me? Not that I mind, it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, I would just be curious to know, and the reasons why. I have a thick skin.

[Pijlstaart]

Babaji dated a woman with a mysticism nose teapot, she'd boil bits of dried geegaw from the hokum pokum shop in it and we'd stick the spout up our nostrils and all our snot would come tumbling out. We'd scurry about the house, snotless and merry, but over the coming days we'd slowly fill back up. Is it my fault the snot is coming back, I'd ribbit sadly, no matter how often I huffed on the nose teapot I'd always come back green and sticky, I'd always be impure in the eyes of the Holland and Barrett asian-fusion etsy wellness gurus.

Perhaps we are meant to be blocked, I fondly remember when the fat controller bricked the treacherous train-engine Henry into a tunnel, how feelgood and wholesome that was, the joy of blocking dysentery with a length of knotted rope, when grandmother wrongly defended the statue of Henry Colston I got to block her IV drip with a clothes-peg. Blockage is good.

[Dex Sawash]

Had you really blocked me?

Spoiler alert

no

[close]

[Pingers]

Spoiler alert

no

[close]

Kinda disappointed

[Sebastian Cobb]

Unblocking the trap joint in my shower certainly isn't one of these.

[rectorofstiffkey]

1. You have a cold (don't worry, it's not the Covid) and one of your nostrils is badly blocked. Grabbing a tissue, you close the other nostril, fill your lungs and pump an heroic amount of air into the blocked one. In one glorious release of pressure, a mass of snot is ejected into the tissue and your airway is instantly clear. Take a deep, long breath through your nose.

Several days after the worst of a cold, I woke up completely unable to breathe through my left nostril and with a dull, hot ache behind my face.  Armed with a Kleenex mansize, battle commenced.  Initially no amount of huffing was unable to shift it; but the ache was so irritating that I found the strength to persevere with one final giant blow.  Much to my surprise, the tissue in my hand suddenly became heavy and warm and the ability to breathe again was wonderfully satisfying.  On inspection, my opponent was a vivid Pantone 382 C, about the size of a plover's egg, and thick enough to hold its own shape.  It remains my fondest memory of unblocking, and a reminder of how truly foul the human body's functions can be.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

2. You are backed up. You feel listless, like an alien baby is couched in your colon, sucking away your life force. You have this feeling you are supposed to be somewhere else, doing something else. You traipse up to the bathroom, more in vague hope than expectation, ready for failure. A lot of straining is required, an epic tussle ensues.

Shredded red cabbage
Fat-free natural Greek yoghurt
2-3 pieces of sugar-free gum

Wait about 2-3 hours and everything should be moving naturally

[Marner and Me]

I like a hot shower and blowing out the snot in there. When I lived in a desert area for a while my nose was just filled with constant hard lumps of dried mucus. Then you'd occasionally get a nose bleed

Sometimes when I get cold obviously a blocked nose ensues, I wrap myself up in my bed and you can feel the snot like warm up and trickle away, giving you clear nostrils for a bit.

[rectorofstiffkey]

  It remains my fondest memory of unblocking, and a reminder of how truly foul the human body's functions can be.

Actually on second thoughts, my best unblocking was probably childbirth, as the expulsion of an 8 lb human is an unblocking experience quite unlike any other.

It's a close-run thing though.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I had sinusitis once, which was like a blocked nose turned up to 11. The relief, once I managed to empty about a gallon of blood-tinged snot into a hanky, is hard to put into words. The entire experience reminded me of the tracker bit in Total Recall:

[hamfist]

On the count of three....one....two....three[nb]these videos are my therapy, I love them so much. maybe I should mention you see poo in this video, bear it in mind before you click. especially when he says "push that back in"[/nb]

[Dex Sawash]

On the count of three....one....two....three[nb]these videos are my therapy, I love them so much. maybe I should mention you see poo in this video, bear it in mind before you click. especially when he says "push that back in"[/nb]

We may need a Drain Addict subforum