The facts
The Guardian reports that an acrid odour has repeatedly forced mechanics at Bicycle Nation, a Herne Hill bike shop, to work outside and has turned some customers away. The smell has plagued the shop since June, when a colleague vomited. Owner Tamas Polocz has complained to Thames Water many times. Thames Water told him last week it accepts that a mains sewer beneath the shop is to blame but gave no repair date. The company later said its initial checks found no nearby blockage and that it will install odour monitors to track the gases. Public‑health engineering professor Barbara Evans said the gas is likely methane and could make conditions unsafe, but the precise cause remains uncertain.
Our take
Here's a fucking public service announcement from the geniuses at Thames Water: if your local bike shop suddenly smells like a spicy barbecue cooked over a septic tank, that's just their new customer‑experience initiative. Don't worry your pretty little head about it. The cunts in charge of our waterways have decided that the unbearable stench forcing Bicycle Nation's mechanics to work in the street and making a colleague vomit isn't quite urgent enough for, you know, an actual fucking fix. They'll get right on it after they've installed some odour monitors to scientifically confirm what every human nose within a mile already knows: it smells like absolute shit. Owner Tamas Polocz has been logging this olfactory horror show since June, cataloguing aromas ranging from “cabbage” and “onions” to “teargas” and, with devastating accuracy, “shit.” He's been pleading with Thames Water, the corporate dickheads who apparently believe their job is to manage smells, not the sewage causing them. Their brilliant diagnosis? A mains sewer under the shop might be responsible. Wow, no shit, Sherlock. Then they roll out their high‑tech solution: odour monitors. Not work crews. Not repairs. Fucking sniffers. They're going to study the problem while Polocz's staff breathes in what experts suggest could be methane in unsafe concentrations. It's a bold strategy: let small businesses suffocate in literal sewage gas while you conduct a leisurely environmental survey. Experts warn that during dry spells untreated sewage sits in pipes because there’s no rain to flush it out, so the infrastructure belches concentrated ass‑air into workplaces. Thames Water’s response is to document the hazard rather than eliminate it, turning a public‑health menace into a bureaucratic curiosity. So next time you flush, remember you’re feeding a rich tapestry of gases that might one day waft through a mechanic's lunch break. It's the circle of piss, you bastards.
