Wednesday 31 May 2023
It’s grey outside, 9°C and clouds are covering the tops of the hills, but still no rain and it’s forecast to be sunny and 19°C later. It’s 07:16 and I’ve already been to our outdoor water tank. Despite optimism that it had possibly risen by a centimetre or so above the bottom of the outlet pipe into the house yesterday evening, it now appears to have dropped to just below the level of the outlet pipe. Chris and I had allowed ourselves to plan first water usage treats. It was a toss-up between running the washing machine and having a shower. For Chris, the shower won out. But Chris has more summery clothes here than I do. I don’t wash my hair every day anyway but it now hasn’t been washed since Friday night. Today, it will have to be washed. I’m thinking a bucket of warm water and dunking my head in it. It’s the rinsing that is most challenging.
Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day. Now that I’ve moved my desk in front of the window, fortuitously facing west so not getting direct sun until I’ve usually finished writing, I feel much happier with my work surroundings. I liked it before but it’s much lighter here and I no longer have a wall behind me restricting my movement slightly.
Chris and I had lunch sitting outside. I lit a charcoal burner with frankincense to ward off the insects. The smoke is great, and smells lovely, and does the job of keeping the bitey buzzy things away. It’s a lovely place to sit.
At around half-five, I went for a walk up to the spring. The land manager had said they would cut the trees, particularly the willow, around the spring so as to limit how much spring water is taken by the thirsty trees. It hasn’t been done yet, though he assured me he would chase the contractors. I like sitting up there, it’s a really tranquil spot, quite high up a hill, on the edge of forest and with some convenient tree stump seats. I sat up there for over half an hour, enjoying the quiet and the birds and the sun. I walked straight down the hill to the top of our garden, which is a kind of assault course of burns (all bar one being dry), clumps of grass and moss, rotten wood (perilous to walk across as some break, some don’t) and long vegetation. I always find it satisfying walking down that hillside and leaping (it might look more like a scramble to an observer) across the final ditch that surrounds our garden, a moat if you like (it’s so not). Today, we have a private water supply specialist coming to assess things. He’s available this afternoon, then not again for a fortnight. We obviously have a lot of hope pinned on his assessment, but likewise a lot of money. If I want to be more positive about it all, I suppose we don’t pay for waste or water so maybe the cost will spread across however many years we would be paying all that, though we have already spent money on emptying the septic tank, but I think £240 for that every two to three years will be nothing compared to what a new or improved water system will cost. Gulp.
Last night, I had a ‘shower’ under the water bottle attachment my friend Duncan gave me for my birthday, on the basis of water issues while he was here last month. I’m not sure he knew it would be used so soon. The two-litre water bottle I had was the wrong size for the attachment but the shower-head stopper worked. I wasn’t able to hang it but it was more efficient than wet flannels or pouring bowls of water. Satisfying though it all was, the washing machine has been bumped down to second place (possible laundrette-visit Friday or Saturday) and a proper shower is my number one ‘when we have running water again’ treat.