Tim Dowling: mice have been at the pipes. But how have they eaten this much plastic?

Born in 1877, Engineer Lieutenant Commander Lumley Robinson was serving aboard the cruiser HMS Aboukir when it was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine on 22 September 1914. Robinson spent more than eight hours in the North Sea before he was rescued. He is better known, however, for being the inventor – in 1921 – of the worm-drive clamp commonly known (and still trademarked) as the Jubilee Clip.

I wouldn’t know any of this if a mouse hadn’t eaten the dishwasher’s drain hose while we were away. And by eaten, I do not mean chewed holes in. I mean the mouse had reduced the hose to a lacy shadow, no more substantial than a cobweb, along most of its length.

“How long would that even take?” my wife says as we peer under the sink, surrounded by extracted cleaning products, kneeling on the damp floor.

“I guess it depends,” I say, “on whether it’s one diligent mouse or a team of them working round the clock.”

This is very soon after the washing machine stopped working because the pump was so tightly packed with loose change – and I feel I am being tested. Replacement drain hoses of various lengths are readily available, but the instructional YouTube video I watch – specific to my dishwasher model – is immediately disheartening.

“First, we need to lay the machine on its side,” says the man in the video.

“I don’t like the sound of this,” I say.

He goes on to show me how to remove the bottom of the dishwasher, in order to gain access to screws that will allow me to take the back panel off. The place where the drain hose attaches apparently lies deep within the guts of the machine.

“I’m not doing that,” I say. “Call a plumber.”

The plumber cannot come for several days. He does, however, offer my wife some advice.

“Outlet connector, something something,” she tells me.

“Can you be more specific?” I say.

“Are you kidding?” she says. “But look, he sent me a picture.”

She shows me a link to a plumbing supply website page for a 17mm outlet hose connector – a plastic join that allows two separate bits of flexible drain hose to be attached one to another, using a Jubilee Clip either side.

“Jubilee Clip?” I say to myself, with a certain wonder. It is a name that conjures celebratory trumpet blasts, and freedom from bondage. I type it into Google.

“Oh, one of those,” I say. Obviously I am familiar with worm-drive clamps; I just didn’t know what they were called. I can’t imagine what words I would have used to describe them.

The next morning my wife and I present ourselves at the click-and-collect point of a local tool merchant, where I place the lacy remnant of the old hose on the counter.

“One of these please, but whole,” I say.

“I’ve seen worse,” says the man behind the counter. “Did you have an order number?”

“Why would they eat a plastic hose?” my wife says. “It can’t be very nice.”

“They need to chew something,” says the man. “Their teeth are always growing.”

“And also some Jubilee Clips,” I say.

“What size?” he says.

“All the sizes,” I say.

My middle son is fortuitously present when I begin the repair that afternoon. From the other side of the dishwasher he shines his phone torch into the recess while I cut away the ragged end of the outlet hose with a kitchen knife.

“The problem is, the mouse only left me an inch of good hose where it comes out of the machine,” I say.

“Have you got enough room to fit one of those screw grabbers?” he says.

“You mean a Jubilee Clip?” I say.

“OK,” he says.

“We’ll see,” I say. “Point your phone down here while I tighten.”

With the new hose connected, I run the rinse cycle while sitting on the floor and watching carefully. The hose jerks as wastewater rushes along its length.

“Any leaks your end?” I say.

“Nope,” says the middle one, from under the sink.

Despite its fame, nobody seems to know why Lieutenant Commander Robinson chose the proprietary name Jubilee for his invention.

“I suppose it represents freedom from the tyranny of the plumber’s restrictive appointment calendar,” I say.

“What does?” says the middle one.

“Or from having to do the washing up by hand,” I say. “There’s something quite jubilant about that.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but sure,” he says.