Jeffrey's Waterless World.

It’s gone midnight and the water supply is not yet restored. Dirty dishes are soiling my kitchen and poor old Jeffrey will have to go to bed unwashed tonight. I find the latter more disturbing than the former, even though I had a shower 24 hours ago and when I was a kid people commonly had only one bath a week. Going to bed unwashed doesn’t feel right in these more enlightened times.

I think the last time I did it was in February 1988. I was staying at youth hostel on the Pembrokeshire coast. The building was perched on top of a cliff overlooking the sea and there was a raging gale coming off the heaving, foamy swell that night. It was all very atmospheric in a Daphne du Maurier sort of way, but the wash house was unheated and I couldn’t face taking my clothes off. I chickened out and made do with changing my socks and underwear instead. There was nobody else staying there except a rather beefy German woman with big hands, so I got away with it. And I’m expecting no visitor tonight, so I expect I’ll get away with it again.

I have enough bottled tap water for a cup of tea and a cup of coffee in the morning, should we still be waterless. After that, who knows? I suppose I’ll drive to Ashbourne in the hope of buying more bottles of water, but I doubt I’ll be successful. I should imagine that all the places which sell bottled water probably became waterless themselves by about 8pm tonight. Fortunately, I have plenty of beer in – probably enough to keep me from dying of thirst for at least a week (and I doubt you can die of dirt.) And what a pity the old school well isn’t still working. What a shame that we dispensed with all those useful things when we submitted to technology and centralised systems.