In our home, the day starts with a cup of tea; the water gushes from the tap into the kettle, and while waiting for it to boil we can potter around, doing a little washing up, maybe putting the washing machine on if the weather looks fine enough to hang clothes on the line… and after the tea and getting washed and dressed (washed under a nice hot shower) the day unfolds. There are various chores, mostly cleaning and tidying, and of course for me there is writing (this actually starts before I am dressed, sitting in my night-clothes pounding the keyboard with my tea beside me!) Our life seems simple in many ways.
When my mum was a child she lived in a small village and the cottage the family lived in was lucky, it had running water… by running water I mean it had its own pump in the back yard. If there was water needed for washing or cooking or cleaning, cold fresh water was available… unless it was a very cold winter and the pump was frozen! Cold water was available, but to wash themselves, their clothes, the pots,pans and dishes, it had to be heated.
Other families in the village might have had to use the village pump… in some village in previous generations water was taken from a well, or streams, or the village pond, and I am not sure in those days they knew that it was necessary to boil water, they certainly used to drink beer (and here in Somerset cider) because the alcohol in it kept it pure.
There are so many places in the world today, and so many millions of families who live as my mum did, with water from pumps… and tragically there are many families where even a village pump would be a life-saving luxury.
Lois Elsden 