Wednesday 7 June 2023
We have had over a month of water-related stress and worry over the latest water supply issue. On the plus side, realising we can cope without tap water for periods of time, and knowing that no rain for the past month and no rain forecast for the next few weeks does not mean we will not get rain again, I’m less consumed by water stresses than I was when all this first started happening back in January with the [expletive] hot tub-filling. We still have the hot tub as our secondary tank, though it’s less than half full now. I’m not sure what we would have done if that were empty and we’d had no flush-water. River?
Yesterday, we decided to turn the tap back on to resume trying to fill our water tank from the spring. I first went up to the spring to see if there was still water around the area. There was, maybe, and hopefully, slightly more than before the willows were cut down and before we turned our water supply off. I then went back to the tank and turned it on, no airlock-spluttering. All seemed good. I checked it again later, still trickling. A bit later and no water was coming out, except the occasional drip. And I emphasise both “occasional” and “drip”. Previously, when the water flow had been down to a drip or nothing, turning one of the two taps for the inlet pipes would result in a bit of water flowing in, then a pause (airlock). This time, turned it off, no water (obvs), turned it on, no water (yikes). So now the tap is off again with a view to not turning it back on again for the three days we had initially tried. My concern, still, about doing that when there is very clearly a significant water shortage is that any excess water will run into the land rather than into our tank. We don’t even know if airlocks are the problem at the moment; signs are there that it could be that we have no water coming from the spring. Hmm. And no rain forecast for at least the next two weeks.
The other ongoing issue is the midges. We have established that they must be breeding somewhere around our bedroom/the roof around there. That room gets very, very hot during the day when it’s sunny and because we can’t even open the windows a crack (those midges are miniscule – why has there been no midge superhero? Something that small and with so potent a bite), it’s probably an ideal breeding ground for midges. They are easy to squish as they largely sit around. When squished, they are about the size of a poppy seed. However, when they are moving, they kind of hop like fleas. Last night, for example, I toured the bedroom, squishing midges. Job done. I went out the bedroom, faffed around a bit, came back into the bedroom and at least thirty had congregated in the corner above the bed. I squished them. By the time I was ready for bed, I checked again, another thirty or so in the same area, and a few elsewhere. We then set up a fan (they can’t cope with more than a light breeze) and I sprayed some DEET around the headboard and a squish into the wind. I think I had a few bites last night but not necessarily from after the DEET and fan. We have about four months of this. I have suggested to Chris we swap his study with the bedroom as his study is cool, which the midges don’t like. He has refused. In fairness, I’m not surprised.
My order of a midge-attack-pack has twice not been delivered. Very odd as Royal Mail have said they have tried and failed to deliver as no one was home. One of us has been home all day, indeed yesterday we were sitting in the kitchen having lunch when the delivery failed to happen. The postal staff know the houses, they usually leave stuff, we have never had to collect something from a failed attempt at delivery. We’ve had parcels left in the ‘parcel bin’, under the car, with the neighbour, by the front door. I have no idea why, of all things, the midge-attack-pack has failed to be delivered. I have special midge-blocking gauze which I’m hoping to secure to the non-Velux windows in our bedroom so we can at least have some air into the bedroom. (A few days later, it became apparent that I had failed to make Scotland the delivery address so the non-delivery was in Lewisham – fortunately, I was able to collect the package a few days later when I was in London).
While all this is going on, my mum is due to visit for the first time on Friday for four nights. The odds are high there will be no running water by then and she will be bitten by midges (she reacts worse than most people to insect bites) or, worse, horse flies (which she has a horribly bad reaction to; the neighbour was bitten by one the other day so we know they’ve arrived). Hopefully, everything else will work.
Oh, and extractor-fan-mouse is back. He left his calling card of a solitary poo and two shards of extractor fan plastic.