dancingthroughchaos

‘Water, water, every where, 

And all the boards did shrink; 

Water, water, every where, 

Nor any drop to drink.‘

From The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridge’s cry of despair came from his evocation of a becalmed ship surrounded by salt water which desperate men might drink and so succumb to madness.  Right now, unless you’re on a boat somewhere, there’s not a lot of water around anywhere in Europe where my friends are enduring drought and multiple fires.  However, it’s the english drought of summer 1976 which sticks in my memory.  

The image that springs to mind is one of playing in the brown back garden where every blade of grass crackled underfoot, fragile and shattering in the unrelenting heat.  My creative eldest sister set up a makeshift slide using a step ladder and a builders plank which we navigated our way down while we tried – with varying degrees of success  – to avoid getting vicious splinters in our backsides.  Quantities of weak orange squash were served from a plastic jug which should long ago have been assigned to a bin.  It was an ugly translucent sphere with a red bottom reminiscent of a particularly unsightly blister and came with a matching set of equally unattractive red plastic cups.

For me it was a summer to enjoy being carefree and outside: walks by the river with our grandparents in Devon; long, exhilarating days on farms with our friends; picnics that fell straight out of an Enid Blyton fiction book and sun-spangled beach days of splashing, swimming and animated shrieking.  I wrote about some of that last year, which you can read here. Back then, I wasn’t remotely bothered by hosepipe bans or the prospect of rationed baths – we didn’t have anything as sophisticated as a shower in the family home at that time.  It was blisteringly hot but children don’t sweat like adults do and, besides, we were slathered in at least factor 8 sun screen.  How little we knew!

Fast forward forty years or so and I found myself in Cape Town during a prolonged and much more worrying drought.  The one looked rather different; I don’t think that was just because I had grown up.  The reservoirs diminished to critically low levels as we approached Day Zero, which was the point at which the municipality would be unable to distribute water safely since the final 10% of a reservoir capacity is counted as ‘dead storage’, ie: unsuitable for consumption. Anxiety prospered while plants withered and died.

As the UK basks in consecutive heat waves (which I’m missing down here in a South African winter) I can only tell you what we did to conserve and recycle what we had.  Perhaps it will help.

1. We showered in a gardeners/builders ‘Gorilla’ plastic tub.  Ours had a capacity of about 75 litres as it had to be big enough for us to stand in without falling over.  That water was subsequently recycled by scooping it out with a bucket and using it for flushing the loo.
2. We were told that a 2-3 minute shower was the maximum allowance. That’s the average length of a single song on the radio – a helpful timer.  In fact, you can be much quicker especially if you adopt the get wet–stop, soap and lather–rinse method of personal care.  Washing hair always took me a bit longer but the same stop–and–go method served perfectly well.
3. Some people did the ‘brick in the cistern’ trick to reduce the amount of water being flushed.  That works fine for a while but can lead to a blocked drain if there’s not sufficient flow to carry organic debris into the local system.  The old adage. ‘If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if t’s brown, flush it down’ was almost universally in play.
4. There was a run on purchases of tap fittings which reduced the flow of water from a gush to a spray, or shower, which proved a great saving.  Some public spaces turned off all but one of the taps in their toilet facilities; others provided hand sanitiser instead, or as well.
5. We stopped using the dishwasher and sometimes only washed up on alternate days, or when we ran out of mugs.
6. The washing machine only operated for a full load, and then only when we were about to run out of underwear unless that had been laundered in the bathroom sink by hand.
7. As the quality of tap water diminished, we drank bottled water.  There are some natural springs in Cape Town (though sadly, not near where we lived), and people queued to fill their 5litre bottles there while they could.
8. We made good use of a ceiling fan at night, adopting a starfish position for sleep.  Top tip: a moistened sarong instead of a bed sheet is an effective way of cooling your body on sultry evenings.
9. Some people didn’t want to open the windows as it let in more heat than breeze, but by opening windows at both the front and back of the house it’s possible to create a fairly effective ‘through draft’.
10. Many houses here have air conditioning which helped cool their homes.  We didn’t but, being on the first floor, we could open balcony doors and let the welcome sea breeze do its job.
11. The hosepipe ban came in very late here.  This one both baffled and infuriated me. I remember it being discussed on a local radio station as I was driving somewhere and shouting at the guests that it was more important that people had water to drink than that their wretched gardens were kept lush and green.
12. The windscreen washers at traffic lights ( of whom there are many) started using sprays instead of water. Multiple car wash stations switched to commercial cleaning sprays too.  Everyone else just had a dirty car.  A clean one was no longer a priority.

I don’t know whether any of those tips are helpful for those of you currently enduring sun-scorched days.  I do know that here in Cape Town they eventually came to an end.  I’ll never forget seeing a gentleman who had stopped his car on the hard shoulder of a bridge when rain finally began to fall.  He literally danced along the asphalt, arms and face raised to heaven in thanks.  Everyone rejoiced, as you will before long.

At the beginning of this year, it rained for 40 consecutive gloomy days in England and everyone was miserable.  Now, people are wondering how little they can wear to work and still maintain their professional sang-froid while feeling tetchy and disgruntled through lack of sleep and excoriating heat.  I imagine the daily commute must be a living hell right now, especially if you use the London Underground.

If you’re on a school summer holiday, being outside, heading to the beach, indulging in lollies and ice-cream will provide memories you treasure for at least the next forty years yourself.

As for me, I return to the UK next week and hope there’s still a bit of sunshine to warm my blood before autumn kicks in and umbrellas and raincoats become the order of the day when normal service is, inevitably, resumed.

[Images courtesy of Pixabay plus personal archive]