Drought

South East of England is running out of water. How this is quite possible I am not sure as it seems to me that it rains quite a lot and we live on a small island surrounded by the fucking stuff, but still somehow it has all gone.

Hose pipe bans are in force and the option of communal street taps like we are some third world desert country has not been ruled out for the summer.

Now I would consider a drought to include:

1. No rain.
2. No really, like none at all for a really really long time.
3. Still no rain.
5. A solitary cloud hopefully watched slowly crossing the vast expanse of blue sky that fails to produce any rain.
6. Sod all rain.
7. Cows with thick swollen tongues nibbling at tuffs of yellow tinder dry grass.
8. No rain.
9. Bleached animal bones on a dry and cracked earth.
10. No rain.
11. Death stalking the land.

I would say someone saying we are in the middle of the most terrible drought ever whilst it is pissing down with rain outside has a looser definition of the word than me. But apparently we are as I found out listening to an interview with a spokesman from Thames Water on the radio

He had clearly had some media training but luckily I have a de-public-relations-alator and this is what came out when I parsed the interview:

Interviewer: “You are imposing a hose pipe ban in the South East. Why is that?”
Thames Water Spokesman: “We are in the middle of a terrible, terrible drought but if we all pull together we might get through it.”
Interviewer: “Drought? It is raining outside!”
Spokesman: “Oh yeah - look at that! But no, that is the wrong kind of rain. It needs to really piss down for months to make up for the fact that it hasn’t rained as much as it normally does for the last few months. “
Interviewer: “Isn’t the real problem the fact that you lose a 1/3 of the water out of leaking and burst pipes?”
Spokesman: “Heh… yeah!”
Interviewer: “Why don’t you just fix them?”
Spokesman: “Yeah I suppose we could but – you know – it costs money, can’t find the staff these days, the pipes were built by the Victorians and we have lost the map so we don’t know where they are - stuff like that!”
Interviewer: “It costs money!! Thames Water made record profits last year!”
Spokesman: “Listen, I am just making up excuses – the real reason is we can’t be bothered. Since privatisation Thames Water is the sole water provider so we can do what the fuck we want and charge what we like. You is all our bitches!”

So there have it - no water for the South East which has slightly incensed middle England because they like washing their cars on Sunday afternoon and as for their gardens – well you really don’t want to fuck with them.

Actually I don’t really give a toss because I don’t have a car to wash and my garden contains: some wet patio, some wet mud, a wet tree, a wet plastic chair, a wet cat looking forlornly in the window, my wet bike I was going to fix up this weekend as am I going to start cycling to work but I am not now because it is pissing down with rain.