Chuckles Chuntering...A Prepper Vindicated

0020. This is a week that would have tested anyone's patience. Anyone who has been following my blog knows that I'm an amateur prepper. I like being organised and having things around the house 'just in case'. My mindset has always been that it's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. My desire to be prepared stems from the apocalypse books I read, some of which really scared me, but my supplies are aimed at being ready for normal shorter term issues rather than the end of the world. Tonight, well just after midnight to be exact, I sort of had that 'I knew I was right to do this!' moment. Not that I feel greatly happy about the circumstances though. 

Scottish Water have been working this week on the water main near our street and it has been leaking water everywhere with no sense of hurry up in sight to fix the problem. For days they have been messing around with it. Tonight at 11pm my dad told me that the cold water had totally stopped. No great surprise there. Now, looking back to Monday the washing machine sort of blew up towards the end of the cycle, leaving us with no machine to use. Methinks the two things could be connected as it was on the final rinse cycle at the time but proving it could be an a whole other issue. It would have to be when I was getting all the bedsheets washed wouldn't it, so everything needed to be handwashed to get rid of the bloody burning smell! Now I'll be handwashing everything which is causing my stupid elbows to REALLY protest! I might even have to continue through Christmas until we have the money to replace the damn thing. Oh joy. I didn't need the water to go off without any warning. 

Ironically, this is exactly the kind of situation that I mentally planned for. My dad tested the hot water which is still running so we ran about for nearly an hour filling up the 'just in case' buckets I bought a year ago and hadn't taken out of the packaging. I wanted to ensure that we had a supply of water for washing and cleaning in case the hot water goes off as well. I do have water purification tablets and an emergency rain catching plan though I don't expect to have to use it! However anyone who read my bear hibernation post knows that I recently bought in another pile of bottled water so I'm well covered for cooking and drinking. That's the reason I'm not in a frenzy of panic. I know that a few days of water issues will not be a problem. My dad and I are going to try and get some sleep and review the situation in the morning. 

8am update. 
The cold water supply was restored last night while we were asleep but it did give us a dry run as to what we need to do in a water crisis and showed that being ready for it is so important. I won't need to break much into my stores of bottled water but I'm glad I had it on hand and not have to hoof out to buy it. I'll use bottled for cooking for a few days to let any impurities in the pipes settle down a bit and the water in the buckets will get used over the next few days for cleaning purposes so that won't be wasted. I feel confident that I am also ready should there be a sudden short term power loss though my dad and I intend to review all our plans today in case there is something we missed. My dad is well chuffed to see that my plans worked smoothly. He's never tried to stop my purchases but he admits he thought some of it might be a little OTT but he said this morning that now he totally gets it. I feel pretty vindicated!

Hopefully there won't be any more drama this week...