by Bec C

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

(The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Colleridge, 1798)

A word of warning to you all – the next time you turn on your tap and clear clean water spurts out, say thank you. It’s one of life’s simplest pleasures which, until it is taken away, we take for granted (on hearing me bemoan the length of showers taken by city visitors, a farming uncle once advised me to do what he does – turn the pump off mid-shower!).

Take it from me, hailing from a household besieged by water woes, reliant purely on the roof as its catchment – water is life. Am I the only new mum to have to walk away from the water delivery man, who declared he couldn’t reach the tanks, with the words ‘please work it out. I’m going to walk away now, before I completely lose it’. But it doesn’t stop there. I suspect we are the only farm which requires the services of the local water truck during times of flood; we are the only neighbours who need to ‘pop next door’ on a weekly basis to fill up our water containers for drinking water even as we don our gumboots to walk through the muddy gates; we are the only home who have required the same water truck to deliver a second load of tank water within 24hrs of having delivered the first, as we failed to notice we had left a tap on the tank open and lost the whole lot down the hill. I think you get the picture.

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