Hot water

It has been a terribly frustrating day.

I am, of course, absolutely longing to get on with reconstructing the garden, ready for the arrival of our new and exciting conservatory.

We could not do this because of lots of other things that needed doing first.

Mark had got to go and replace the engine water pump on the camper van, and I had to replenish the household supplies of cakes and biscuits. It is not nice to live in a house with no cake, and this was very close to becoming our fate had I not acted in the nick of time today.

We were not just facing a crisis of cake. We are eating huge quantities of bread at the moment, and it seems to be costing an awfully lot of money. This morning I unearthed the bread maker and made bread rolls.

This is not an activity that is usually possible over the summer months, because bread needs somewhere reliably warm where it can rise, and whilst the fire is out we don’t have anywhere like that. Today, however, I knew I was going to be using the oven, to make buns and caramel shortbread, so whilst it was hot I could put the bread to rise in the grill bit over the top of it.

The business of the stove is something of a Topical Issue, and one that I am encouraging Mark to consider whilst we are pulling our domestic structures down about our ears.

I think the time has come to take a fresh approach to the wild and untamed Water Gods who have been sloshing chaos over our lives lately. I want to compose the whole water system in our house into a calm but firm new order.

I want hot water.

This is the twenty first century. I think it ought to be part of my Human Rights, along with wearing a burka on days when I am too fat to fasten my trousers or don’t want to talk to anybody.

Of course really I am perfectly well aware that I should consider myself fortunate. Lots of people in the world have no water at all, still less piping hot water dribbled benevolently out of a tap at usefully opportune moments. I know that it is a luxury, pure and simple.

Nevertheless, I want it.

I am a hedonist to my very core.

We have got hot water in the electric showers, but not in the taps. Every time I wash the dishes, which is very often indeed now that we have got so many children at home, I have got to boil the kettle. In fact, mostly I boil two kettles. These sit on the top of the wood burner all winter and on the gas stove in the kitchen all summer.

There are two reasons for this.

The first, obviously, is that for most of the summer months the stove is not lit, and hence there is no heat source for water or putting bread to rise or drying wet socks.

The second is that even when the stove is lit, in the winter, the hot water tanks are a long way away. They are in the loft at the top of three flights of stairs. The hot water takes ages to get to the kitchen, and the pipes take even longer to warm up. It is simply too wasteful to run the tap and wait for it.

Boiling the kettles does the job, but involves a lot of terribly organised planning activity. If I could simply turn on a tap to wash up, I would not need to think about it ten minutes before I wished to start. I could recklessly wash up as many things as I felt like without needing to judge whether or not, and when, to heat a second kettle.

Hot water would make life blissfully easy.

Mark thinks that once we have got some more space, caused by a conservatory, we could perhaps put another hot water tank in the living room.

I could have a hot cupboard then, for sheets and towels, and where things could air when I have washed them.

I could have a hot wash in the morning when I get out of bed.

Best of all, I could have actual hot water right there, in the kitchen. I would never again need to be cross because somebody had pinched the boiling kettle to make coffee.

I am feeling very encouraged indeed about my life at the moment. My Domestic Burden is about to become very much lighter. Things are looking up a very great deal.

I just want to get on with it.

The picture is the author getting on with it.