There's a drought/ hosepipe ban in the offing

Here the rainy season tends to start with the start of the school summer holidays.

 

I found later that only certain postcodes are affected. No wonder that we are part of it. We are part of the extreme drought where no rain has fallen. Even tomorrow’s rain seems to vanish to hit and miss.

 

I sometimes wonder how other countries cope that have always had dryer summers than us.
I know we have a dense population who likes to waste water most of the time, we also have water companies who can't get round to fixing leaks, good job the gas people dont have the same attitude to leaks.
But we cant cope when its dry, we cant cope when it snows, we cant cope when it's wet and we struggle if its just cold, How did we survive this long.

 

I know Australia had some pretty strict water restrictions during its years of drought. There is a wonderful episode of the sitcom "Kath and Kim" where Kath and her husband Kal go to buy a hot tub. The snooty salesmen clearly thinks they can't afford anything decent and is steering them towards all the cheaper models, so they buy the most expensive one in the showroom - all the bells and whistles. The episode ends with Kath and her daughter Kim sitting in the hot tub with the water up to their ankles: "We're under restrictions, it's all we're allowed".

Australia has had quite a reversal in recent years and is now suffering terrible floods.

 

But those countries do have droughts, we get below average rainfall for 6 months and suddenly everyone says its a drought.
We had one of the wettest winters on record last winter if you want to believe the statistics, but at the time it was caused by climate change,
Now I think we are back to global warming.

 

Snowball? Oh, I can’t cope with snowballs.

 

Personally, I like them .

 

By chance, in-law lives in Los Angeles and they have regularly hosepipe bans.
Other countries like Spain don't have this garden culture as the UK has got.
There is a hosepipe ban since May in some parts of Western Germany.

It's the lack of knowledge in this country to believe we have the only incapable politicians and water companies.
It's pure maths: no rain, no water.

 

There has always been climate change, droughts and shortage of water now and then as well as wet summers and winters, and flooded areas.

This is generally assumed the worst drought Europe has had: 1540 European drought - Wikipedia

We have to deal with it like restrictions to water use, but I would have done it earlier and forbidden all the swimming pools being filled up.

 

When we visited the Open Gardens in Bampton last month, 3 of 6 gardens had huge swimming pools.
Looking at google maps air view in 2013 while living in Maidenhead, I was surprised how many had a swimming pool in their garden not far from us next road.

 

We are an island surrounded by water! Desalination could solve a lot of the problems I'm sure.

 

It's a very expensive, energy intensive process and leaves you with a lot of ultra-salty waste to get rid of.

 

Maybe there’s a fancy sea salt opportunity there. How about Grimsby Grains?