Rain or shine

Two things sit over the South East at the moment. The first is the spectre of drought. Apparently water companies are worried about the level of water in reservoirs and aquifers and ‘stand pipes in the street’ have been mentioned. These comments, backed up by strokey-beard type announcements about this being the driest winter since the last time and so on were designed to put the wind up consumers in the same way that a fox might put the wind up chickens. What has happened is that the chickens have told the fox to go f**k itself. The chickens have pointed out that rather than the problems with water being caused by a ‘drought’ which nobody can remember happening, might it not be caused by the kazillions of gallons of water being pissed away through leaks that go unfixed while the fat cat executives use the money for pay for fund feasts of venison off of gold and platinum plates. Rumours of the mass importation of little Dutch boys to plug said leaks are unsubstantiated.

What is substantial is the second thing sitting over the South East, which is a fucking huge belt of cloud. It’s been what is technically described as ‘pissing down’ for the last week or so, to the extent that I was drawing off water from my butt in case of what I believe I have termed ‘butt-burst’. Checking the thing yesterday I was an inch away from the top lip. That’s a lot of water. Looking out at the waterlogged garden, drooping trees, torrential gutters and filling butts, it was rather hard to take the drought seriously.

Until the drought order kicked in. This bans all ‘non essential’ use of water. I was under the panicked impression that this was everything short of drinking the stuff and that the population would be reduced to using wet-wipes for personal hygiene but apparently it’s all about not being able to have ornamental fountains working during the summer. Not an obvious choice, but there you go.