Water, water everywhere...

... but if you dare run any down a hosepipe that's 1000 quid fine,matey.

Within the next couple of weeks the people who supply my water will be making it an offence to use a hosepipe. Now in my innocence I thought that this simply meant "don't use a hosepipe irresponsibly" such as leaving your lawn sprinkler on but no, it's anything. Got a bit of a bad back (like me) and you'd like to fill your watering can up from a hose so you don't knacker yourself carting the can back and forward to the tap, sod you dragon, you're not doing that!

Oh you can have a dispensation if you're disabled but, get this, the qualification for "disabled" is you have one of those disabled parking badges! Well what fecking use is that! You have to be virtually immobile before you can get one of those these days and if you're that screwed up physically I would posit that your hobbies are unlikely to include vegetable gardening.

And as regular readers of this blog know, I have horses; how exactly am I going to get water to their paddocks and stables without a hosepipe given your average hoss will neck down up to 30 litres of water on a hot day?

The best bit though came when I saw the water companies are encouraging people to rat on any of their neighbours who dare get the hose out to fill the kid's paddling pool. I can only assume that it is only a matter of time before we have self-appointed wasser blockleiters who will be prowling the district looking for any evidence of "hose crimes". Maybe for every three people they report they get to run a bath?


Look we all know its been dry and there's not so much of the H₂O to go around but how about for once treating us like intelligent, responsible adults rather than naughty children and just telling us "Look, it's been dry, be sensible with water please. Here are some things you can do to help." You could use some of that740 million quid in profits you made last year to run a few TV ads.

Oh and speaking of Anglian Water's 740 million profits; .given we lose 25% or more through leaks and unrepaired busts maybe you could attend to that first rather than encouraging people to frogmarch their friends to the police station for daring to water the parsnips.