I’m nervous. I feel that, just by writing that word above, I’ve committed myself to something enormous. I might as well have written ‘Life’ or ‘Time’. Water is such an amazing, multifunctional thing, how could I ever expect to do it justice in a short and – it has been said – flippant blog? I’d need a whole documentary series at least (hello any commissioning editors out there?)
You can drink it, cook with it, wash in it, swim in it, float on it, sail across it, dive beneath it, skate on it, ski on it, feed your plants with it, build things with it, dissolve things in it, see yourself in it, give birth in it, anoint yourself with it, use it to level things, weigh things down with it, make things move with it, marvel at its majesty as it plunges over waterfalls or rages through ravines…
Yet every time it falls from the sky, totally free, we grumble about it.
Such is the double-edged nature of water. I mean, try finding one edge for a start. While it serves us in so many ways, water can destroy us just as readily. It can flood our homes, drown us, electrocute us, freeze us, wash away our dreams, leak through our roofs and, most scary of all, it can drip… slowly… silently… undetected… until the ceiling falls in.
For this reason, I have a love-hate relationship with plumbing. I love the parallel pipes, the right-angled joints, the gleam of the solder, the smell of the flux. But plumbing unnerves me for the simple reason that it contains water. And I know, from bitter experience, that water stops at nothing when it sniffs a way out.
Electrics don’t drip. Brickwork doesn’t drip. Timber frames don’t drip. And I know plumbing shouldn’t drip if you do it right, but how do you know you’ve done it right until you’re sure it’s not dripping? And then, how do you know it might not start dripping in future? The only thing you can do for peace of mind is leave it all exposed for the rest of your life and have a wrench always at the ready. Or, as my wife keeps telling me, get a professional to do it. Damn, that hurts!
You see why I was nervous about tackling water? This blog barely scratches the surface. You can’t scratch the surface. It is unscratchable.
