It's amazing, isn't it, the things we take for granted, even things we can't, physically, live without. I've spent the evening touring the midlands in search of enough water to get my family through the night, and suddenly, when something that usually is so instantly and easily available now is so unobtainable you become shockingly, aware of your complete and total dependance on it.
Part of Derbyshire and Leicestershire have been warned by severn trent to not use the water for anything, this means no drinking, no boiling, no washing and no flushing the toilet! On average, a single person in the UK uses over 150 Litres of water a day! Water is an essential part of us, our very bodies are 83% water. And yet how much do we take it for granted! It flows out of a tap, and we use it (a lot of it), we've got so comfortable with that, we don't even think about it, until suddenly it's longer there.
And yet, there are those in the world for whom the panic and desperation, the travelling further and further away seeking water, that a lot of us experienced tonight, is more familiar to them than the impossible idea of turning on a tap and out flows more than enough clean water. 783 million people in our world do not have access to clean water, yet we use 50 Litres just to have a shower. Well not tonight we won't. It certainly puts our water crisis into perspective.
We don't know yet how long this water warning will continue, it may be fixed tomorrow, or it could go on much longer, but perhaps when you're thinking of us in the midlands, or if you are also affected and you're running round like a mad chicken trying to find bottled water, just spare a thought and a prayer for those 783 million who can't even hope for the tap to be turned on tomorrow morning.
