Today was just not my day! The first mishap occured when I took the kettle off the stove, and the wire cover that fits over the gas jets came undone, and I quite forgot that it was supposed to be hot, so I shifted it back with my bare hand, and it was a case of jumping about two feet in the air, as the pain was excrutiating! I held it under the cold tap for ages, but it took a long time for the pain to subside, and I was left with blisters on both my forefinger and my thumb. Eina!
Then I heard people talk outside, and it was oom Vlei, our munisipality foreman and his team coming to have a second try on opening the water furrow running in front of my house, as their first try was not quite doing the thing. I watched from my little bench, drinking my tea, and again of course only one man worked while the others smoked, and watched, leaning on their spades. But after a while oom Vlei, who had gone off after unloading men and tools, came back, and after some talking, all got back onto the pick-up, and off they went.
Still a little while later I heard one heck of a racket, like some huge machine was trying to eat up my house, and on looking out, I found that it was an earth moving machine that was put to use in the furrow. The next moment a deluge of water stormed down to my house, and I ran to close my door, nearly bally drowned! Well, just about! The machine had destroyed the main waterpipe feeding all the homesteads down along the river, and as it was going down so steep, the water pressure was very strong.
There was a lot of screams, and a big commotion, and then oom Vlei who had just came, departed again, followed by the earth mover. And I was left without water. I dressed in clean clothes, ready to go up and complain, when back came oom Vlei, with the workers, and I thought they were going to fix the pipe. No such thing! They stood around, laughing and asking each other what the heck oompie Piet had done now again. Oompie Piet I supposed was the machine driver. Then all of them departed again, and down came the earth moving thing, and started gulping up huge mouth fulls of earth from the furrow, and spitting it out on the side of the road. I think that as the pipe did not look in a good condition anyway, oom Vlei had decided that while on the job, they might just as well make a good job of it.
I salvaged about a liter of water that trickled from the tap, and drank very little tea, so as to save my precious water. When my throat felt parched after about four hours of abstaining, and I was relishing a cuppa, I found that a cockroach had fallen into my remaining water. I have never ever before found a cockroach in my house, and where that thing came from, I will never know!
I tried the tap, and a cupful of water trickled into the kettle, and that was my last cuppa for hours, as the water came back on at about eight that night, after the pipes were fixed.