When the water stops

It is a universal truth that something cannot be truly appreciated until it it lost. Take running water for example.

Late this afternoon I turned on a tap, and discovered that either cause and effect had decided to play a merry jape on me by trading places, or else something had happened to my water supply. I dimly recalled a series of clatterings emanating from outside my living room window a little while earlier and duly went hither to investigate. I didn't have to go very far to establish a likely cause. A number of small metal plates outside my window had been prised up to reveal strange and mysterious holes containing equally strange and mysterious spigots. Tempting thought it was to play "Pick a spigot" in order to restore my water supply, I assumed that someone somewhere had good justification for shutting the water down. I would have been pleased to have been informed of it before hand though instead of being caught short, so to speak. There were no obvious suspects around with who to discuss this matter so I sent off to track them down. 3 staircases, and five doors knocked upon later and I was face to face with the culprit in number 22. Number 22, I should guessed. That particular flat, three floors above mine, has a habit of springing leaks on a seemingly regular basis. One particularly severe incident two years back saw a leak from number 22 cause a small amount of water damage to my flat. Needless to say the two others between mine and number 22 fared even more poorly.

Fortunately, I had an amicable meeting with the owner, Sarah, and commiserated with her present woes, which indeed were rather woeful (not woeful enough to affect my still freshly decorated flat thankfully, but I wouldn't like to be her downstairs neighbour right now). Carpets had been pulled up, floorboards removed, and things in general were rather sodden. A plumber had been called, but in order to stop the leak he required some plumbery device and had run off to obtain one. The absence of water was only expected to last until his return and Sarah took on board my comment that it would probably have been a good idea to notify the affected flats of the outage before the water was turned off.

Still, I had a good natter with Sarah - it turned out she'd almost bought my flat a couple of years before I did - and it was fascinating to finally get a peek at one of the flats above mine. All share the same layout and since I've moved in I've been itching to see what they look like and how they utilise the small amount space available. Number 22 hadn't changed much since Sarah had bought it, and it's definitely ripe for upgrading since it's current layout makes the flat seem more cramped than it need do. I invited Sarah to pop down to so I show her what I'd done (and yes, so I could show off my flat again :), and she didn't believe it was the same size as hers at first. She also won my affections by complimenting my tiles without any prompting. (Here's a hint, when you see my flat for the first time, compliment the tiles - it makes me feel better about going horribly over budget on them). I am slightly envious of the extra amount of light her flat receives, but seeing it definitely justified a lot of the decisions I'd made when planning this place (not to mention my new sofa's as well).

And shortly after that the water was restored again, and not a moment too soon. Surprisingly it had made for a rather pleasant afternoon. Funny how things work out.