Not a drop to drink

Growing up in a country which seemed to be perpetually in the throes of devastating drought, it's a tad depressing to sit on a grey, miserable, rainy island and have to endure it all again. Though admittedly, 'endure' is laying it on a bit thick, as no-one has yet suggested we put a brick in our cisterns or pour the bathwater into the loo (if we should be so reckless as to have a bath in the first place). However, Red Ken has advised we don't flush if we've 'Just had a pee'. Cheers Ken, that's the sort of cutting edge conservational thinking a crisis like this demands. It's the kind of insightful thort which makes this toilet notice in the pub I visited last night, all the more amusing. The Water Poet (it just gets better and better) has had water gushing up through the floor in the Mens for weeks, despite endless appeals to Ken's plucky crew of divinators at Thames Water. Luckily I have no grass to be banned from quenching with either hosepipe or sprinkler. The bedraggled Plant of No discernable Identity(TM) in my kitchen, seems to get by on a pint of the clear stuff every six weeks/when I remember. I hardly water my rubber plant at all and it's rapidly taking over the dining room and will soon require some brutal trimming with a machete. I know too well, the grief a person can suffer by growing overly attached to houseplants and indeed, fauna in general. My Mother rashly returned to the Zimbabwean homestead she was forced to abandon last June, only to discover that the year she leaves, the country is drowned by torrential rain. After endless seasons of futile drought busting (roaming four + acres with buckets of bathwater) she found her pride and joy transformed into the Island of Dr. Moreau, though fortunately without Marlon Brando in a sheet, lurking in the undergrowth.

All this drama, and Summer hasn't even begun, I dread to think what the Nation's mood will be mid-August, when they're all onto their third layer of skin and temperatures are 'Soaring' into the twenties. At least my rubber plant will be happy.

B