Bowsers, butts, buckets & bottles

By Rick Minter

Martin suggests the gentleman (actually my dad) might be filling his watering can for the garden. Sorry to appear defensive, but all our buckets and containers were already pressed into action catching water alongside the water butts. I'm puzzled at the lack of water butts among my neighbours - why not harness the bountiful precipitation gushing over your roof? Water butts are cheap, effective, low-tech devices and perhaps should come as standard with new homes, as a condition of planning.

Without mains water, it's things like the washing-up that are the challenge: grey water isn't up to it and the bottled stuff seems too precious for the dishes, so hair-washing and the crockery are the main candidates for bowser water in my household. Oh, and like most of the water-deprived Gloucestershire residents, I smell of wet wipes at present. They're a neat way of washing with no, or minimal, water and I feel less guilty having found a supply of biodegradable wipes in Waitrose.

Incidentally, a week ago I'd not heard the word bowser and assumed it was a breed of dog when it was first mentioned. Now it's in common daily use across Gloucestershire and in the media.

There are two lessons I've learnt with the water management this week. Both are simple and obvious, but sink in only at the moment they become real. First, water is heavy stuff. It's tiring to cart water around in buckets and bottles, and I'm glad I don't have that many stairs to negotiate or a baby in the household to magnify the water needs. Of course, carrying water is a daily routine for millions of people elsewhere in the world - aren't we a bunch of softies? The second lesson is how time consuming it all is. I reckon it adds a couple of hours to the daily chores to use water from bowsers, butts, buckets and bottles. Washing up - we do it once at the end of the day to be frugal - takes an age, as do most other mundane functions of rinsing and washing.

Finally, to continue nit-picking Martin's comments, the New Midlands Forest certainly did happen, as the New National Forest (we obviously haven't given it sufficient attention in ECOS), and as for those "puny pumas" we get in Gloucestershire, well, they'll have moved to higher ground as the water rose, meaning even more big cats will be at your door in the Forest, Martin (they prefer deer, rabbits and the odd pet anyway).

Back to the buckets ...