No water on Christmas Day!

[EatSpamAmandaLamb]

We've been at family in Greater Manchester today and woke up, at first to very low water pressure, followed by no water at all.
Apparently it is the same situation in London too.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/dec/25/thousands-of-homes-without-mains-water-in-west-london?

Luckily our veg was all in saucepans of water after we peeled them last night and my brother had some bottles of water to hand but we went to a small supermarket who had completely sold out.

This has really made me think about prepping water.

Get a rain tank.

Potable supplies on tap are something we really take for granted right enough. The real cruncher, in my own experience, is actually toileting. If your supply is interrupted for some reason, I'd first off go and put masking tape on the toilet handles - people just automatically reach out and press them. (And you don't know when supply will be restored.)

Hope you all managed.

I only have an empty water can (never used) just in case, about 10 L or maybe 15 L, can't recall, plus an IKEA cart to roll it on, should I have to fill it up somewhere. One does tend to take water for granted. I'm always thinking I ought to have a couple of litres of bottled sparkling water, just in case one would wake up one morning and - no water! I really ought to see to it some time, soon. I'm also glad I don't live in Flint, Michigan.

I had a colleague who had a Christmas turkey in the oven, half baked, or maybe it was just done, can't recall. It happened one year when there was a sudden power cut right on Christmas Day. Not so funny, a luxury problem for the rich, but still annoying if it happens.

If you have a rainbutt in the garden, that is very useful for using in toilets as it doesn't need to be potable.

I do recall a few Christmases when DM had to cook 2 turkeys when the neighbours were visiting (we had an emergency gas cooker using a bottle as there were a lot of brownouts at the time and our electricity supply was on a different line to the village (we lived on the outskirts of the village) so our electric cooker still worked) - and then cooked her own one later when they left.

If it happened to me, I always keep my big gas BBQ having some gas even in winter (we have a traditional neighbourhood BBQ on our green if we have enough snow to be "snowed in"!) so that could work if mains supplies were interrupted - or else my camping gas 1 ring stove or mini charcoal bbq for camping that we could chop up the turkey into smaller bits, and either fry or BBQ enough for the meal and the rest later. I could probably also cobble together a campfire to cook in the garden too if necessary - tin foil parcels work great and could do baked potatoes in that option as well.

Rainbutts are great but I believe that most people seriously underestimate the amount of water needed for toilets. I'd keep the rainwater - which, of course, depends on you having had enough rain - for drinking only.

I doubt that any of us would be able to achieve again the life we currently have. Toileting facilities which are easily to hand are just one of the aspects of that.