My Hose Has Gone Limp
11th February 2006

My hose has gone limp. It’s hard not to see it as a personal failure, though the circumstances are beyond my control. The condition is erratic, which puzzled me until recently: it works well in the afternoon but, come the evening, it flops and lies dejectedly in my hand.

I’ve tried running it out to its full length, I’ve experimented with a range of attachments - all to no avail. The once majestic flow has dwindled to a trickle.

My neighbour’s hose is also limp and, in my evening walks around Tinwald, I observe men standing, glumly, with limp hoses.

I told my mother. She said it must be something in the water. I said she had a dirty mind.

It’s not something in the water. It IS the water - or the absence of it.

It is February and the lawns and gardens of our town are drawn across the landscape like a patchwork of carpet underlay. Never mind the momentary greening from this week’s rain. A farmer friend informs me the all-important subsoil, that nursery of nature’s wellbeing, is as dry as Helen Clark’s wit.

Years ago we’d have simply shrugged our shoulders, licked our dust-caked lips, squinted into the burning sun and put it all down to another drought.

But that was before we discovered we’d been living on a layer cake of aquifers, through whose alluvia ran rivers of water far richer than seams of gold. There’s plenty of water. There must be, or Ecan wouldn’t keep dishing out consents. “Drink up,” they tell the cockies, “sink that well, and another, no worries about supply.”

Well, I’m standing in Tinwald with a limp hose in my hand and I reckon somebody upstream is getting my share.

When I say this I might as well be the Little Red Hen.

“It’s not my fault,” exclaims the acquaintance from Alford Forest Road, “my well ran dry in October.”

“Don’t blame me,” retorts the colleague from Winslow, “we’ve gone to 40 metres just to boil the jug.”

“It couldn’t possibly be us,” chides the friend from Winchmore with the large centre pivot. “Our well’s at 250 metres. That must be too deep to affect you.”

And was that a shadow of a blush?

I don’t ask for much: a few drops for my tomatoes, a light shower over the roses every now and then.

I laboured through January, watering only on even numbered days, in accordance with my street address. Dutifully I waited, hose in hand, while the clock ticked through the minutes and seconds to 6pm, the magic moment when I could lawfully release the bountiful waters upon my parched soil. The clock struck, I opened the valve.

At the same moment thousands of other householders opened their valves. We stood in our gardens, from Netherby to Willowby, while the water pressure collapsed, and we watched our hoses wilt – united in impotence.

When 31 January was followed in quick succession by 1 February and my garden wilted for three days while my odd-numbered neighbours splashed about with impunity, I rebelled.

I called the District Council and demanded they relax their tyrannical bylaws.

Our hands are tied, they told me. If we ease the restrictions the whole system will go down.

There must be another solution, I raged. Some mean bugger in Greenstreet is hosing down his cowshed with my tomato plants’ water.

The only way around it is for you to dig your own well, they told me.

My own well?

Yep, they said. If you’ve got your own well the hosing restrictions don’t apply. Of course, you’ll need resource consent.

My own well! My mind raced – a cunning plan was forming.

One week later, and several hundred dollars lighter, I had the resource consents. I phoned the well-digger.

“How much does a well cost?”

“$170 per metre plus extras.”

“Right. I want a 2 metre well.”

“Two metres! In Tinwald you’ll have to go to 30 at least.”

“Nuh. Two metres is what I want. And you can stick a pumpshed on top with a nice fat pipe going into the turf.”

So they did. Now I have a well, with a pumpshed and a pipe, for all the world to see. My well gives me licence to suck the town water supply 24/7. I hose my garden, my house, my driveway, the neighbour’s cat. I run sprinklers from every tap on the place. You can almost hear the town pumps groaning as my zucchinis swell.

With each passing day my property becomes more of an oasis among the dustbowls of Tinwald. Moisture drips from fern and frond, the lawn breathes deeply beneath my feet.

It’s obvious I’m flouting the law, but what can they do. The law is powerless.

I have a well.

Nobody said it had to work.