On Wednesday, without any warning, our water went off at home. Well – I say ‘without any warning’, but Thames Water had been watching a leak in my stretch of the road for three weeks, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before the water was cut off, so they could carry out repairs. The problem was, nobody warned us it was about to happen.

Luckily, no-one in the family was caught under a dry shower covered in suds or shampoo, so I suppose it could have been a lot worse. However, one of my daughters had a dental appointment and was so worried about not being able to present perfectly clean teeth to the dentist, that she marched outside in her orange hooded pyjamas to ask the technicians how long it would be before the water was back on. Either they were very polite or were used to seeing irate, pyjama-clad young women in the street, for without cracking a grin, they told her our services would be reinstated within the hour, which we estimated would leave us just enough time to get ready and be out of the door in time to make the appointment.

But what to do while we waited? We couldn’t make a coffee, or do the washing up, because there wasn’t any water. We couldn’t do the laundry either. And of course there was no chance of using the loo, as we wouldn’t be able to flush or wash afterwards.

The leak took longer to fix than we’d been told it would, but luckily, we were able to jump into the car and drive to my mother’s to do what we needed to. Not everyone’s in a position to be able to do that though…

Reading the MTW report (below) made me thankful that this industry is working hard to produce appliances and bathroom products that use less water – and of course thankful that many of us, as consumers, are considering water consumption when we’re choosing what to buy, so less water is used in our homes.

For no matter how fabulous and technologically-advanced the latest products and appliances might be, if they use water, they’re absolutely useless if there’s no water available, aren’t they? We need to start conserving every drop we can, so waterless, frantic mornings, don’t become the norm…

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Yours,

Jan Hobbs