Fluid Overload (1)

a.k.a. "Water Water Everywhere But Not A Drop To Drink"


Day 11 of the water crisis around here.

Many parts of the UK were drowned in the rain & ensuing flooding that started a couple of weeks ago.

My local water purification plant was flooded so any tap water would have been contaminated.
So it was announced that the water was going to be switched of very soon, so everyone filled their baths, buckets, etc so they'd have stuff to wash with or flush the loo.

Thing is, I had been away for a few days and got back home to go straight out to work again, so I returned the next morning from the night shift to find there was no water full stop.

This posed a problem.

Particularly the first time I forgot and used the loo as normal. (Only a number one luckily)

I didn't have any spare water, so, begrudgingly, I tipped my one bottle of mineral water down the loo. And nothing happened.

You see, I'd recently had a bit of a clean-up and chucked a load of tisues & kitchen roll in the loo, to be flushed next time I went. Bad timing, it turns out.

So I thought to myself, what else can I use to flush the loo. I went to the kitchen & discovered a nearly full bottle of Asda cherryade that no-one else had wanted after the last BBQ. Brilliant. Straight into the pan it went.

Now here's an experiment you can try at home - it appears that aforementioned cherryade reacts a bit with urine. And fizzes quite a lot when you pour it from a height, Tom-Cruise-in-Cocktail-style.

The red liquid frothed up and up in the bowl, with tissues floating atop the sickly sweet-smelling scarlet bubbles like rafts. It very, VERY, nearly spilled over the side (while I was shouting that No NO thing people do when pouring a drink - I was that close to sipping just to stop it overflowing...)

Thankfully, the tide came down to leave a few inches of froth & tissue mulch. I closed the door & haven't been back into that bathroom since!

Straight to supermarket to get bottled water - none left.

So I was in a predicament... but luckily I live next door to a hospital... They must have water in a hospital, surely?


TO BE CONTINUED...