Carol’s Column

Taking a bath with the neighbours saves water

This Saving-the-Water business is getting me down.

Mind you, it is for the good of the country and I suppose I can hold up my head (which hasn't been shampooed for two months now due to the fact that I'm saving water) and say: "We're doing our little bit for the nation."

"We must save water," my spouse announced to me several weeks ago. "Gauteng is in crisis, waterwise. There's a drought, cattle are dying, people are suffering, plants are shrivelling and what are we doing? Nothing."

I nodded my head sagely causing dandruff to fly. That happens when you don't wash your hair regularly, you know.

Strategic places

So, with true patriotic fervour, we drew up a list of Save-Water rules and pinned it in strategic places. The kitchen, the bathroom and the family noticeboard next to the invitations to a "cooee ethnic" party and a short-legged dog show.

Actually, if I say so myself, it was a pretty comprehensive list of suggestions. For example, I've always had a strong interest in history and I recalled that during World War 2 soldiers in the desert used one glass of water daily with which they brushed their teeth, washed, cooked and cleaned the windows of their tanks, their rifles and their underpants.

On Monday, a lorry drew up outside the house and a pile of bricks was deposited.

"I think you've made a mistake," I gasped, as a man tipped the truck on to my newly planted tulip and daffodil bulbs which were just beginning to sprout.

"This is the Lazars," he said. Quite belligerently, I thought. His muscles rippling in the sunlight. Well, delivering bricks does strengthen biceps I guess.

Just then, my minister of agriculture, Loda Mphela appeared.

"Loda, do you know what these bricks are for?" I queried.

"Madam (he still calls me Madam although I've tried to explain it's passe in the New South Africa) they are for the toilets. If you place bricks in the cistern, you save plenty of water."

"But so many bricks?"

"You will see, it will work," he said with confidence.

To tell the truth, it does. That's if you don't mind rushing out to the swimming pool (which is now at quarter mast, so to speak) 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 said to my husband, Loda Mphela and other various family members whom I couldn't really see because my eyes were stuck together because I hadn't yet filled my glass of water and washed.

"It's just that I object to having to run around in the gardens in the middle of the night to find the swimming pool so that I can fill a bucket with water. Furthermore, last night I was arrested by the Parkview police for streaking."

"Dearest, but why did you run to the Zoo Lake?" asked my husband reasonably.

"Because the water in the pool is empty."

To tell the truth, bathing these days is quite fun. Being community spirited, we and the Halls, our next door neighbours and very good friends, have decided to bath together.

"But why are you wearing goggles and flippers?" asked my husband last night as I squeezed into the bath beside him, Doug and Trish Hall and Loda Mphela.

"So that I can find the soap if I drop it," I retorted snappily. Really, some people are so unimaginative.

Actually, it's not easy bathing with four other people, especially since Doug Hall has put on a little weight. We did try showering together, but it's not satisfactory crowding in a shower waiting for sporadic spurts from the shower head. I forgot to mention, we put bricks in the geyser, too.

There are advantages. Wine is great at breakfast, it brightens your day and gives you a happy feeling. And, to tell the truth, the dogs are flourishing on Schoonspruit although Dirty Dumpling, our venerable maltese, prefers Perrier.

Furthermore, these days we do everything by candlelight because electricity wastes water and it's really romantic.

On Wednesday, I had some Canadians to dinner.

I rustled up a superb meal of canned spaghetti garnished with dehydrated mushrooms, 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 Mr Canada. "Just look at those dinky little fish floating around the water jug. You South Africans have such interesting customs. I've never seen anything like it."

I was suitably modest. "Actually, it's pure and natural water direct from the Zoo Lake and the fish are a bonus, they're baby carp."

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

Drink champagne

Well, what can you expect. They're not South Africans and their country doesn't have a water crisis. They don't have to deny themselves, go without, give of their best, suffer.

As we're doing, by observing the last instruction on our Save-Water list. Anyway, it makes sense, if you drink champagne, it really does save water.

A thousand and three apologies to Liberty Life. In a column this week I accused them of planting ugly concrete blocks beside their building instead of grass, plants and trees. Forgive me. The building opposite The Star upon which I gaze through my window is The Bank of Lisbon and it is they who are planting hideous concrete blocks. As I said before, may the mangy pigeons of Johannesburg unite and deposit their droppings on these blocks with vigour.

Heard a great broadcast on the way to work this morning by 702's John Robbie in which he mentioned that The Muppets were returning, and this time they would be Politically Correct and introduce a muppet of colour. "Can you believe it?" he said and went on to wonder if soon we'd see a lesbian muppet, a disadvantaged muppet and so on. Pity children's author Enid Blyton's not still alive. Noddy could have become a Rasta, Mr Plod a black, Jewish, lesbian policewoman, and Big Ears a ... I give up. It's all too much.

■