Country life
Water music
Patrick Marnham
As the winter wonderland or White Horror returned to the countryside, its residents tried to puzzle out what the newspapers can have meant by the 'Greater Manchester Brown Belt' water emergency. Apparently large parts of the north-western conurbations were thrown into chaos because the water was brown, the supply dried up, people had to boil it and Mancunians, long noted for their glistening appearance, could, no longer bathe.
Much of the water for 'Greater Manchester' (does it have an Emperor?) comes from the Welsh hills, and up in those watery hills the shock of the Brown Belt emergency lost some of its impact. Indeed it sounded much like normal life. In the land of water the mains stop at the town boundary, and the normal procedure for those with a private supply is frequently as follows: When the taps in the house run dry one's first move is to check the tank in the field above to see if its full. If not, one moves on to the well which feeds the tank. In the great drought of 1975, which was the driest period since 1727, many of the springs which fed these wells dried up. Locally, the great drought of 1975 was succeeded by a less-publicised but even drier period which ended only two months ago, just before the White Horror, or winter months, struck. So, last autumn, the springs dried up again. With a dry tank and a dry well one's next move is to obtain a 300-yard length of hose, and connect the tank to the tap in the nearest barn which is kindly made available by the farmer. In freezing weather, water will only run down this pipe if and when the sun thaws out the hose. Every two days in times of low rainfall the tank must be filled in this way.
However, after about a week of this the tap in the barn also dries up. Then it is up the hill and into the woods to inspect the tank which feeds that tap. This is sometimes empty because the gully leading from the canal is blocked by leaves. But all too often the gully is quite clear; there is just no water in the canal. So one returns to the house to obtain a lawn rake and spends an hour walking through the woods up the canal bank dragging out branches. leaves and slime until one reaches the point where the canal joins the stream. There have been times when the stream has also dried up because the policeman who lives at the top of it likes to dam it to assist his building operations, but a description of how he was persuaded to undam it might lead to future complications. Instead, let us return down the canal, this time attempting to repair its banks at the numerous points where the new water level is spilling over them and wasting itself in the wood.
It is very peaceful in the wood, there are badger sets to watch, and the way in which the light falls through the branches would have interested Pissaro, but he probably never reached the end of a canal to find that a splendid torrent of muddy water has com pletely blocked the gully and hidden if from sight. Never mind, it is but the work of ten minutes to roll up one's sleeves and scrape around in the freezing mush to unblock the grating and allow the tank to fill up again.
After three hours the upper tank is full, the barn tap is working, the hose has thawed and the lower tank is also full. So it is back to the house to have a bath in lovely, grimy stream water. But what is this? Not a drop comes out of the taps. An airlock must have got into the supply pipe when the lower tank originally dried up. One clears an airlock by driving to the town's water depot and borrowing a Patty double-action hand pump. Attach this to the tap in the wash-house, pump vigorously for one minute, there's a gurgling noise and, yes, here it is again, the familiar jet of freezing grey water all over your trousers. Back to the depot to return pump with thanks. Up to the barn to remove hose from tap before lower tank overflows. Ignore geese starving to death due to lorry driver's strike and try not to get between friesian heifer and charolais-cross bull calf. Heifer quite large and has tendency when disturbed to tread on hose thereby necessitating further journey to town to obtain new joint.
On returning to the house it is to find the assumption that water in wash-house equals water in kitchen etc is untrue, owing to the fact that the pipe has frozen beneath the brick path. Ingenious solution adopted is to build wind tunnel over assumed line of pipe, with spare bricks for walls and oilskins for roof. Then place fan heater at mouth of wind tunnel, switch on, adjust position of fan heater and receive severe electric shock due to inadequate nature of improvised extra wiring. Scream. But after further two hours there is the joyful sound of water trickling into kitchen.
House now has water which is OK for bath, just about OK for washing up, excellent for house plants and guaranteed intensive care if you drink it. At least in the country you know where this water has been, since you have walked around in it for much of the week. Alternatives are boiling it, or taking a ten-gallon drum down to a neighbour whose clear spring is running that week. Repeat half the process every two days and the whole process every week, until Historic Drought White Horror has been succeeded by springtime — or Flood Chaos.
But at least for once there was Welsh water in the hills and more in Greater Manchester. So in the evenings we sat around wondering which newspapers sheep preferred to eat and observed half a minute's silence for those poor buggers in the great conurbation who couldn't wash their cars.
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