And now for something completely different....

Hello All
Now when I was a child we had a toilet something like this.... I never remember it having any problems and to my young and tender mind it always worked. In fact both sets of Grandparents had toilets something like this on the right of the page and to the best of my knowledge they were always in good working order. So then I moved to Zimbabwe and the toilet we had in our house usually worked. It looked something like the one below.....

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The cistern in Mother in laws house usually worked but had a notice on it that read "Please lift the handle after flushing" and after many visits to lots of different houses in Zimbabwe during the 12 years I lived there, we had variations on the sign "please push down after use" and "lift then press" etc, etc. We also had bits of wire coming out of the top of cisterns to enable you to either pull up or push down the floats or valves inside the cistern without removing the lid.  Anyhow I thought to myself oh well this is obviously what it is like to live in Africa and put it down to bad manufacturing and poor economic environments and living in the third world.

During the drought years (91/92) there were bricks in the cisterns to reduce the amount of water used, bits of tape put over the flushing buttons so that one would remember not to flush too often and even some clever little ditties printed on the cistern to make the whole experience more amusing for everyone, "if its yellow let it mellow if its brown flush it down" springs to mind. Nice and memorable with a good rhyme. If I recall correctly they turned off the water during the day in some of the towns, Bulawayo area being the worst hit.
So moving back to the first world in 2004 there would be the up side of having a toilet that worked properly like I remembered from my childhood.

This is a picture of my toilet cistern here in France once again suffering from its probably monthly attack of "the water-is-going-to-run-continuously-itus". Oh dear bang goes that chance at one-upmanship for the first world.
In fact this is not an isolated incident my foster brother, recently visiting from UK, London no less, tells me that the toilet cistern in his London home (that he rents out) also suffers from the same affliction which can lead to complete disharmony and revolution amongst his tenants when this occurs causing him to contemplate having to install a second bathroom facility so that when, not if, the problem 

happens again they can use the second toilet whilst the first is being repaired. 
This, once again, is not progress. I don't think I view my childhood through rose tinted spectacles and I am sure I would have remembered my Dad cursing at the toilet, if it had been a regular breaker downerer, if Gavins behaviour is a standard approach to the irritations of plumbing.
So with all that said happy flushing
Helen