What goes down must come up

I've taken to exploring different back alleys to get to the seafront. A rewarding pastime, providing one divides ocular attention between the ravishing facades of the buildings, the narrow ribbon of azure sky above, and the inevitable dogshit deposited on the cobbles precisely where feet are meant to go.

Well, today, the reward was that of a bystander. I had just started to leave the Place Nationale to go into the narrow rue Sade (full of interesting shops including a horse butchers and a ravioli maker). A very elegant lady of about forty, replete with fur coat, expensive shoes and even more expensive coiffure, was striding in the same direction, about twenty metres in front of me. Rue Sade is frequently blocked for repairs, so I wasn't overly concerned by the black, and none-too-clean, high pressure hose snaking towards the rue. I was, after all, primarily alert to the dogshit dimension.

The posh dame's shoes clicked purposefully into the rue Sade: suddenly a whoosh, and a geyser of brownish liquid spurted up from the roadbed and rose to roof height. A plume of merde-tinted spume trailed from this fountain, carried by the wind. The dame was, in one fell swoop, trapped, petrified and spraypainted. A perfect example of Ardengo Soffici's simultaneità! A workman in protective overalls rushed to switch some valve off. Had I known then what I knew later, the word here would not have been 'valve' but 'stopcock'...

I didn't wait to listen to the dialogue, which risked exponentially increasing my command of azuréen diatribe, and, anyway, I selfishly wanted to get to the Marché Provençal. On my detour back to the Place Nationale, I followed that snaking high pressure hose. It was connected to a truck with a large tank and a powerful pump, working full blast. That was the cause, then, but what was the effect? On the side of the tank, written in jolly letters, along with a helpful picture for the illiterate, was the sign: Les Vidangeurs du Golfe - Assainissements, Fosses Septiques, Ramonage des Egouts. That's why the lady was now a tramp.