The water in Majorca don't taste like what it oughta. And the water in Clare just isn't there. Yes, in the 21st century, in a country surrounded by water, and on an estuary for the longest river in the country at 230 miles, we have no water. It was on Christmas Day that we noticed the cold water in the kitchen had stopped working. We were just recovering from a week of serious minus temperatures as low as -12C (8F in old money) and had got used to the shower not working. The shower had however now come back, and we weren't worried about the cold tap in the kitchen because we could just use the water from upstairs. We now know that this was because the water upstairs comes from a tank in the loft, and the water downstairs comes straight from the main. This was discovered after the toilet cistern no longer was refilling and the water also went from upstairs. The front of the local newspaper has the headline "The Clare Drought," and is full of bilious comments about how it wouldn't have happened if such and such a political party was in power, or because of the immigrants, or because of aliens. The truth is the frozen weather damaged a lot of pipes, and the thaw meant that leaking had drained the local reservoir. The council had one choice, turn off the water to everyone and ration the water. So, this I can cope with. I can understand that it's needed. I can also understand the importance of the restrictions. What I can't understand is that the water is only available between 10 and 12 in the morning. 2 hours a day, and all the local residents have to queue to fill their collected water bottles. We have 4 bottles, totalling 20 litres. I can use one of those bottles just flushing the loo, I can use another doing any washing up. So, I can spend 30 minutes queuing for the water, and by the time I've used it, I can find that it's gone past 12 and I have to wait another day to get more. So, drastic measures have been called for. We're leaving later today for the land of the free and watered, Galway. We're booked into a hotel where we're going to drink large amounts of water, bath and shower, swim maybe and do lots of other things with the water we haven't got here. In the meantime, the official comment from the guy dishing out the water at the standpipe in the village centre when asked when the water was coming back on was "Christmas." Maybe the guy has water on the brain. All I know is we don't. We don't have any water anywhere.
