Who Turned the Hard Rock Into Pools of Water

... goes Psalm 114, the traditional psalm associated with baptism. Anything watery has particular resonances in this area today. Yesterday evening I noticed my kitchen cold tap running less strongly until not long before I went to bed it gave up entirely. Today was supposed to culminate in us hosting the Deanery confirmation service with twelve candidates from six different congregations, and I did think that the sense of dread and foreboding that strangely affected me when I first woke up was to do with that. But now I wonder. Sandra our pastoral assistant and her husband, who were organising the food after the confirmation, unusually turned up at the 8am mass to tell me No, the problem wasn't with my kitchen mixer tap but with the water supply generally. Through the day it got worse and the water company organised bottle distributions in a couple of local car parks. I was OK - a large house with only one person in it retains quite a bit of water in its pipework - but I ended up delivering some water to Trevor, and church members collected more for others they knew. People said intemperate things online to local councillors and anyone else who would listen. The problem seemed to originate with a local water treatment plant being deluged with dirty water after the recent storms. Hopefully the situation is now improving, but it'll be hours before the reservoirs fill up again enough to apply pressure for the pipes.

Everything went wrong with the confirmation. Somehow I'd missed one of the candidates off the order of service, and mangled printing the first hymn so had to run it off on a separate sheet. I forgot about microphones and the card reader until the last minute. The retired bishop leading the service forgot his kit and had to go home to get it: he was so late we assumed he was stuck in traffic trying to get to the water distribution point. But we got it done and I think even the toilets somehow kept working thanks to our own residual water in the system. The choir sang Psalm 114 as the bishop led the confirmands to the font. I'm glad we went ahead, though as much official advice I had was to cancel. I can now barely think two things in a straight line, if you see what I mean.