My quarterly water rates bill has always been a piece of officiallooking paper that I scan quickly for the ‘Total amount due’ window, pay resentfully and get on with my life. It comes under less scrutiny than my energy bills, maybe because I can directly trace a line from the energy bills to all the useful devices in my home. But ‘water rates’ has always been an abstract concept. This stupid thing again! I think, every time I pin it to my noticeboard.
Then recently a trickle of water started coursing down our street: a trickle that within a few hours became a creek. I was standing out front, looking at it and thinking, tsk, tsk, all that water wasted, when my neighbour pointed out that it was coming from my front garden.
“No! Really?” I said, adamant that I couldn’t possibly be the source of such wanton water wastage. “It’s your water main,” she said. “Call Sydney Water, you fool!”
On closer inspection, I realised she was right. The little tappy thing hiding under bushes in my front garden did seem to be the source of the (now) river. The little tappy thing with numbers on it: ohhhh, so that’s what they mean when they say they need to ‘read the meter’.
I dug out my last bill and called ‘Faults and Leaks’. Forty-eight hours later, the cavalry arrived. When I say ‘the cavalry’, I mean a guy in high vis barely out of his teens. He knocked on my door and politely informed me he would be switching off my water “for a while”. He was so blasé about the concept of switching off my water (as if he were just switching off my porch light) that it didn’t occur to me to fill up the bathtub first – because it’s not until someone turns your water off at the mains that you realise how stupidly convenient modern life is.
You heard it here first (although I have a feeling the Ancient Romans knew this too): fresh running water really is the very essence of civilization. My whole day became a series of ‘I’ll just – oh no I won’t’ moments.
Those loads of washing couldn’t be done, number twos had to be held in, hands could not be washed, and the kettle could not be refilled.
Which was when I had an epiphany about those water-rates bills I’d been paying so blithely and without gratitude. Ohhhh water rates, as in: the water that is supplied to my home 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It occurred to me then that the quarterly bill could do with a plain English overhaul. ‘Water rates’ sounds like interest rates, sounds like council rates, sounds like parking rates: something you’re just paying because you just have to, as opposed to something you pay because you’re getting something essential supplied directly to your house.
I think ‘Taps and Toilets’ or ‘The endless supply of fresh running water’ would be more eye-catching names for my water bill. I’d pay it promptly – and it would feel like money well spent.
