Any fantasies about being able to survive in the wilderness or during a zombie apocalypse vanish as soon as the water supply goes off, writes Euan McColm.
The kids are staying with me and the boy needs new specs, so, after school, we toddle down the hill for him to pick a pair.
We’re only out for half an hour, but, when we get back to the flat, all is not well. The washing machine’s emitting a shrill, incessant beep. It’s shuddering, too.
The girl, ensconced in her room nursing a sore throat, has dealt with this disturbance by turning up the volume on her telly.
A flashing alert on the machine reads “NO WATER”. I open the door and the contents are dry. I turn on a tap and not a drop comes out.
I feel a sense of dread.
Abandoning all logic, I rap on the girl’s bedroom door. “What,” I demand, “have you done to the washing machine?” as if she has thrown in her gym gear and pressed some secret combination of buttons that not only renders the machine useless, but also cuts off the water supply to the flat.
A flicker of self-awareness – just enough to remind me I’m being utterly unreasonable – has me apologising.
“Door!” she shouts, as I leave. She’s at the age where most of our communications are her shouting “door!” at me.
Time to take control
I establish via Twitter that a fractured water main has cut supplies to more than 100,000 homes in Glasgow. The girl’s fully in the clear.
It’s time to take control. I call a family meeting in the kitchen. My heart sinks as I hear the boy call: “Just a minute” followed by the sound of a flushing toilet.
“The water’s off,” I tell them. They are unperturbed. “If it stays off, will school be shut tomorrow?” asks the boy.
“OK,” I say, “two things: number ones only; and we need to open up all the taps a little so that when the water comes back, we’ll know.”
They perform this task while I frantically refresh the Scottish Water website. There is no update on when the problem will be solved. How can this be?
A gruelling 45 minutes without water
There’s been no water for three quarters of an hour now. What is so broken with the world that the issue hasn’t already been identified and fixed?
I’m buying bottles of Evian online when the girl tells me the internet says you shouldn’t leave the taps open because that can actually damage the system. For shame, I reply that this must be something new.
There’s enough water in the espresso machine for a double
There’s enough water in the espresso machine for a double. I make one and sit on the sofa, caffeinating my anxiety and rueing my pitiful inability to deal with the slightest crisis.
The door opens. “Dad,” says the boy, a smirk on his face, “You’re probably not going to want to go into the bathroom for a while.”
Euan McColm is a regular columnist for various Scottish newspapers
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