Waterboarding

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

Cough. Splutter. Splutter. Stop.

So went the tap when I turned it. No water issued forth. I tried another tap in the bathroom – same result. Oh dear, this is not good. Doubleplusungood, in fact.

Having established we had no water, we popped next door to ask if the neighbours had also been similarly afflicted. No, they hadn’t, and they explained (with diagrams) the vagaries of rural water supply in New Zealand. We then went down to the front of the property to check the pump, and also looked into the tank (empty).

OK, that’s as far as the neighbours could help. We called the owners, and one of them arrived to take a look, bringing with him a bucket to get water out of the trough (which would enable toilet flushing, at least) and some drinking water. This would tide us over (har, har) until he could come back in the morning and investigate and fix the problem properly.

Do you want to know how water supply in rural New Zealand works? Thought not. Anyway, apparently the cistern fills on a slow trickle, and the rate of flow turned out to be too slow to give us full service by the time we’d returned from Napier. The owners therefore ordered a tanker of water to be delivered to fill the cistern, and that duly arrived. Huzzah! All fixed. They also left instruction on how to turn on the mains supply (which has a much lower pressure than the cistern supply) in case of emergency.

On the plus side, it meant that we were able to meet the owners, and Ian and Eli were able to talk to them about the horses in the paddock – to the extent that Eli was then able to take them out for a ride on the subsequent mornings, which made her very happy.