Carol’s Column

Drink champagne and do your bit for South Africa

THIS water business is getting me down.

Mind you, it is for the good of the country and I suppose I can hold my head up and say: “We’re doing our little bit.”

“We must save water,” my third son announced several weeks ago, “the country is experiencing a drought, there is a crisis situation, cattle are dying, people are suffering — and what are we doing? Nothing.”

We all nodded our heads in unison, causing dandruff to fly.

A list of How-to-Save-Water rules and regulations was drawn up and pinned to the family notice board next to the invitations to a bull fight, a roof wetting and a Roman orgy.

Full of the ‘do’s and don’ts’ of water conservation, it had been drawn up by the children and seemed pretty comprehensive.

On Monday a lorry drew up and a pile of bricks was deposited in the driveway.

“You’ve made a mistake,” I gasped, as a man tipped the truck on to my newly-planted tulip bulbs.

“Madam, isn’t this 14 Glamorgan Road?” bellowed the driver belligerently, his glass eye swivelling in the sunlight.

Just then Jamie appeared. “Ma, it’s all in order. Those bricks are for the toilets. If you put bricks in the cistern, you save water.”

“But so many bricks ...?”

That’s the trouble. My family always overdoes things, there are no half measures.

I mean, take the toilets. I think it’s ridiculous to rush out to the pool to fill buckets with water to flush toilets that are blocked with bricks to save water.

I voiced my displeasure at breakfast the other morning.

“In principle, I’m with you,” I told them, “it’s just I object to having to run around the garden in the dead of night trying to find the swimming pool.

“Furthermore, last night I was arrested by the Parkview police for streaking in a public area.”

“Ma, nobody told you to run to the Zoo Lake at midnight.”

“I thought I’d enter into the spirit of things and fill the bucket with water from the lake instead of the pool.”

“So, couldn’t you have put on your candlewick dressing-gowns?” My husband was critical.

“I was in a hurry.”

I must be honest, bathing has become an ordeal.

“Why are you wearing goggles and flippers?” asked my husband as I squeezed into the bath beside him and wriggled a little space between Barry and Ralph.

Although the goggles were misting up, I noticed that Jamie was wedged fast between the hot and cold taps, half suspended above the water, while Nicky, being the lightest, floated on the surface.

“So that I can find the soap if I drop it,” I retorted.

“This certainly saves water,” observed my husband jovially as we all lifted our right arms to wash them. “And it’s such fun doing things together as a family.”

Personally, I find it too crowded sharing a bath with five other people.

We did, in fact, try showering together, but that was too competitive what with six people jostling for one sporadic spurt of water from a temperamental shower nozzle.

The kids have taken to drinking wine for breakfast. “It brightens up scrambled eggs and do you know it saves four tins of water? That’s how much you use for one of those orange juice concentrates,” said Barry proudly.

“Right. But one glass each,” I instructed as I noticed the boys riding to school backwards with their satchels balanced on their heads. “Too much wine makes you reckless.”

The dogs are flourishing on Perrier water though Liquorice-the-labrador shows a decided preference for Schoongesicht, the local product.

And it doesn’t bug me anymore that we do everything by candlelight as electricity wastes water.

It was unfortunate that our genuine Austrian duck-down duvet made in Hong Kong caught fire and had to be doused with water. Brandy only increased the flames.

Only the other day, we had some Canadians to dinner.

I rustled up a superb little meal of canned spaghetti with dehydrated parsley garnishing — which was almost as much of a sensation as the water jug.

“Honey, isn’t that just too cute for words,” said Mrs Canada to her husband. “Just look at those dinky little fish floating around the water jug. What a novel way of serving water, I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

I was suitably modest.

“It’s actually fresh water, pure and natural, untouched by human hand, from the Zoo Lake. And funnily enough, the little fish are a bonus, they’re baby carp.”

My guests were suitably impressed though I noticed they stuck to whisky.

Well, they’re not South African, their country’s not in the throes of a drought.

They don’t have to deny themselves, go without, give of their best, suffer a little.

Well, there’s one thing about champagne, it certainly makes life sparkle.

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