A Word in Your Ear

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We were staring into our coffee cups miserably contemplating yet another day without a shower when the plumbing started to knock and groan.

“The water’s back on again” I shouted in excitement to my sister, who looked a little stunned at the volume, as I happened to be sitting next to her. All previous inertia disappeared as we flew into action in the race to fill fifteen empty 8 litre bottles of washing and drinking water before being cut off again.

We had been in Andalusia 7 days and the water supply had been sporadic. After arriving home from the airport, cleaning up the flooded house and finally grabbing some sleep we woke up the next day to find the water cut off again. Only having a couple of litres of drinking water in the fridge and knowing that shops close down for the weekend we considered our options. The swimming pool could be used for flushing but not a lot else and there was a danger that if we used too much of it filters and other technical stuff would go to hell. So we headed to the supermarket and packed as much bottled water as we could into the car and it was a good move too as :-

Saturday and Sunday – no water

Monday – the water came on at 11.30 at which a mad rush ensued to have showers, do the washing, laundry and refill empty bottles and,of course, the pool. It got cut off again at 2.30pm

Tuesday – water came on at 9.30am and went off at 11.30pm – ditto above action

Wednesday – no water

Thursday – no water and to add insult to injury there was a massive 4 hour thunder-storm at night which cut the electricity so all desperate thoughts of having a shower a la fresco were banished as we stumbled around in the dark for candles.

Friday supply fully restored – and has not gone off since – touch wood.

Thank goodness for the swimming pool – we swam in to keep clean, we used the water to flush toilets, the cats for some reason drank from it despite having fresh water (any ideas? Because it beats me!) and it kept us from checking into a hotel just so we could have a shower.

Trying to get the problem fixed of course was another issue because no one we spoke to wanted to take responsibility for the problem. The owner didn’t know what was going on, his agent told us to speak to the builders as the house was only ‘semi-legal’ because the local government had ignored directives from state government about not building on the land and he didn’t know who was responsible for the supply. So we paid a visit to the builders to see if we could get some clarity on the subject. They were closed and a piece of paper posted on the door said “gone on holiday back in 5 days”. Coincidence? I wonder!

We polled the neighbours to see if any of them could shed some light on the situation. But they all own their houses, have learnt from previous experience and installed water tanks so hadn’t been troubled by the absence of water. In fact Bob, very kindly offered us the use of his shower.

It’s been a week now since the last cut but we have 100 litres of water tucked away just in case and of course, the pool which I have learnt to maintain and clean on a daily basis because you never know when we may need it to come to the rescue again.

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