Fire and Water

In what feel like the far-off days before our taps stopped working, I left the church on Friday after Evening Prayer and turned the corner to bump into a crowd of people thronging the street and about to set off on a procession to the Rugby Club behind a small tractor playing some most incongruous music. I had a burning torch thrust into my hand by the Leader of the Council, and found myself swept up by mass enthusiasm, as it were. Crossing the sodden earth by means of duckboards we joined hundreds more souls beseiging a variety of food trailers and milling about waiting for the fireworks to start. I used to enjoy fireworks, but not only did I have work to do, noisy bangs make me feel nervous nowadays for the animals listening to them. I don't know if Blue Peter still warns children to keep their pets indoors for the duration, but I'd prefer it all to be quieter. At least nobody lives all that near the Rugby Club.

As I write, my taps connected straight to the mains are still dry: up the hill where we are, we're possibly too close to the reservoir for the pressure to have built up sufficiently. That will soon complete the third day of interruption. I try to make allowances, and spurn the comments of various self-appointed community loudmouths online whether I agree with them or not, but I was genuinely astonished to discover that the water company didn't have the local care homes on their priority delivery list. They had to rely on the old people's day centre driving their minibus around to deliver water, and various local councillors visiting with bottles from the distribution centre as individuals. You could hardly imagine a better example of laudable charity filling a gap that shouldn't be there in the first place.