Frozen

Image: Mine

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.  Anne Bradstreet (1612 - 1672), 'Meditations Divine and Moral,' 1655 (attributed to).

When I left Australia I was telling anyone, who wasn’t sick of listening, that I wanted to have many new and exciting experiences. Of late, these have dropped off as the cycle of work and commuting and groceries and boring stuff has increased.

This morning though, provided one of those new experiences I’ve been missing. It wasn’t something amazing or miraculous. It was a lack of running water.

The weather has finally been cold enough for the pipes to freeze. A phenomenon I’ve heard of but luckily avoided. My housemate discovered the problem at 5:30 am when she got up to have a shower before going to work. What I didn’t know would happen, even though she reported it to the tenancy bods, was that a plumber would arrive just after 9am, with me still in pyjamas, looking stylish with bed hair.

He looked at the taps, went back downstairs and checked the mains and came back with the verdict there was nothing he could do that wouldn’t negatively effect the pipes. So, it is now 10:46am and there is still no water. I’ve been up to the shops and brought a couple of bottles of water, so at least I can have a cup of tea but that doesn’t help with flushing the toilet.

Hopefully it warms up enough to defrost the pipes a bit, otherwise, it will be back to the bogan baths I had in the Middle East. Yay!!!