Norq From Ork

Well, Storm Barbara and Storm Conor have finally left and good riddance to them both.  After perpetual storm force winds for days and days, NotPhil our guest began to have a slightly haunted look.  Having never been to Orkney before he probably thinks it’s normal to get a free face lift every time you step outside the door.  Not that we stepped outside the door much, but when we did it was like being in a family challenge to walk ten yards to the car, get in and close the door without losing anyone in a gust of wind to Norway or further afield.

I was silently thankful that we had survived without a power cut and NotPhil’s first impressions weren’t that he had travelled back in time to a land where there was no electricity or running water…. (we came close)

But then I woke up to no running water.  What fresh misery is this?

I’d already spent half the night awake debating if I should go to the toilet or not.

Wake up for three seconds, check time, turn over to go back to sleep, question in my head if I need the toilet or not, decide not because I’m too tired to get up and go, lie awake thinking about how now I’ve thought about needing the toilet in the middle of the night I now need the toilet in the middle of the night  when in all honesty I don’t really need the toilet I just better go but then that’s not training my bladder properly and I will reap this in older age and besides I just finished bragging that I was 47 and can still go a whole night….yada yada yada.

Remember when pulling an all-nighter was partying hard?  now it’s sleeping the whole night without a loo break.  Anyway, I digress.

So it was official, we had no water. Google was no help except to give me a number to phone where someone is sitting there night and day to take calls from miserable people like me who have woken up to no water.  She was patient and said there had been no other phone calls from my area but she would get someone to investigate it.  Of course me being queen of nighttime over thinking started wondering if the problem was within our boundary (therefore our problem and cost) and was I going to find when daylight came that the the garden was submerged in water?  What would NotPhil think?  Would he ever come back again?  Would I ever be able to marry off my daughter if we couldn’t get some decent weather and operational basics going soon? How long do you have to be without a water supply before the man delivers emergency bottles of Prosecco? I’m going to have to drive to public toilets a mile away which brings me right back to the question, do I need the toilet or not but now I’ve thought about it I do…….

My royal ‘annus horriblis’ had been compacted into about three hours. I lay there thinking how sorry I was that I took fresh running water for granted and how I would never take it for granted again in my whole life if they could just locate and fix the problem as soon as possible and could it also not be on our patch of land as well please so we didn’t get stung with a massive bill just as we were licking our wounds from the Christmas alcohol cost.

Orkney Beef had to go to work at stupid o clock and it was still pitch black and too dark to see if there was a problem in our garden, though he did rake around in the garage for a bit and look at the boiler declaring it ‘ok’. I phoned for hourly updates and by then others were starting to wake up and discover no water and phone in as well.  I wasn’t the only one  any more HALLELUJAH! Kindly neighbours offered to come with bottles and flasks of water. (they even bought home bakes, they must have known I was out of them too) Such is the heady power of whinging on Twitter, and almost as soon as they set off with the supplies the water came back on.  Double rejoicing.

There’d been great humour on Facebook when I asked the Prosecco delivery question and bleated about my first world problems like not being able to run the dishwasher and having to use a public toilet.  It was akin to that dreadful camping debacle I once tried.  One friend lamented that while they had running water, they had lost electricity and therefore nearly lost her ice supply for drinks.  Readers, it was a terrible day for us all.

All joking aside, I’m hugely grateful to people that go out in all weathers to fix burst pipes or reconnect the many people that lost power over the last few days.  Hopefully, the weather will settle down now and if I let our visitor NotPhil win at Monopoly again he may come back in fairer weather.

Happy bit between Christmas and New year everybody.  Chin up, summer is on its way!