Plagues of ladybirds, a hastily drafted drought bill, shared baths and
friendships forged over standpipes ... As the first water ban in a
decade comes into force, Martin Wainwright remembers the long, hot
summer of 1976, while Dominic Murphy offers 20 tips for saving water
Martin Wainwright
Wednesday May 17, 2006
Guardian
I was the newest reporter on the London Evening Standard when the rain
last stopped falling in the summer of 1976. I was sent out at short
notice to suggest ways of coping with the terrible lack of water. It was
slightly desperate and lickety-spit since I was only two weeks out of
Bradford and didn't know my Hampstead from my Holborn. But the combined
gods of journalism and the weather (usually equally fickle) beamed down
and the terrifying editor at the time, Charles Wintour, put the results
on the front page.
The cutting is as yellow now as the grass in the parks was then, but the
hints I cobbled together then may be helpful as much of Britain faces up
to a second blitz of hazy blue days and nights of drifting barbecue
smells and murmurs from sleep-outs on neighbouring balconies.
And they bring with them wonderful memories: it was so lovely being warm
and languid all the time, if not very clean. The most popular
T-shirt/car sticker/badge that summer was "Save Water, Bath With A
Friend", and, uncomfortably unerotic as it tended to be, lots of us tried.
Women nipped about on mopeds in summer frocks instead of the usual
leather clobber; sales of bikes and scooter below the 125cc limit -
which allowed you unlimited travel if you had L-plates - went up by a
quarter. Admiralty Arch became a favourite bikers' rendez-vous. In the
way that a scent lingers, I can still feel my Honda 125 puttering away
while waves of heat from the endless sunshine and exhausts bounced to
and fro between those venerable curving walls.
My hasty recommendations in the paper started with sheltering in the
cool lee of the Pru building in High Holborn, comparing it with Eliot's
instruction in The Waste Land to "come in under the shadow of this red
rock". The reference was so erudite that it led to the only asterisked
footnote ever carried by a story on the Standard's front page. But it
was great that the metaphor survived, because the beating heat between
June and September gradually turned London's limited green patches into
a thorny scrubpatch just like Eliot's. Even the rosebay willowherb died.
And I can't nail the date, but there was a morning in July when all the
birds on my street in Maida Vale finally threw in the towel and migrated
to Berkhamsted or somewhere where there were still seeds and buds around.
You could water window boxes with dish-slop, though, and that was
another tip: take a shower by standing under Selfridges' petunias, which
were given a pretty upmarket daily dousing in water largely free from
bits of crud and washing-up-liquid slick. But the best bet, which I've
often used since on sticky days in London, was to fall back on the
breezes generated by tube trains. Those long escalators on the
Piccadilly line were a life-saver - up and down, up and down - until
you'd cooled in the regular funnels of air that the trains push ahead as
they zip along.
It seemed to begin in May, that drought, at the very start of the
summer, but the Met Office people had been worried for months before. In
fact the alarm bells had started going off in September 1975 after a dry
but unmemorable summer. Subsequent records show that, actually, less
rain fell in the largely forgotten drought of 1995 (73mm against 76mm in
'76, appropriately), but the difference was that in the great drought of
1976, the sun shone and shone and shone. The really big heat started on
June 23 when a whole fortnight saw temperatures reach 32C across much of
southern England. It blazed until almost September, defying the British
rule of hot but dull, and that was the reason for the general sense of
glee, however serious the experts kept telling us the situation was.
No one had ever seen so many ladybirds - a colleague remembers the sound
they made when you walked on them - crunch, crunch, crunch! - and the
absence of green on the ground was made up for in the air by apocalyptic
swarms of aphids. This was odd if you were on a bike - open your mouth
and you got an involuntary snack, part aphid, part undigested lettuce or
dandelion in their tiny stomachs. It fitted with the exhilarating sense
that plagues were being visited on us, but only lighthearted ones. Bath
with a friend, eat aphids and, as the Times recommended, use last
night's unemptied basin to shower on a flowerbed - while standing in a
tight circle of dirty pots from supper and breakfast.
For children of the 60s, in particular, the bonus was that the weather
only seemed to discomfort the right sort of victims. It was a nightmare
for Saturday car-washers, for example - in 1976, a filthy vehicle was
one of the marks of an Upright Citizen, endorsed by the Sun and the
Daily Telegraph. While slightly batty-looking hosepipe patrol vans
prowled the streets in Birmingham, some fitted with pipe-detectors that
looked suspiciously like coathanger sculpture, real direct action was
taken against golf clubs. A vigilante group of Surrey housewives,
ostensibly the last people on any Che Guevaran recruitment list, forced
their local club to turn off its sprinklers by sit-ins, harassing
greenkeepers and night-time vigils, which were easy to organise on those
sultry evenings. (It was the year for all-night parties; a group called
the All Night Party contested local elections but unfortunately didn't
win any.)
Back in the north, where I grew up, the standpipes made their
appearance, one per 20 houses, but not for more than a month and
(allowing for the pink effect of spectacles looking back 30 years) to an
encouraging revival of friendships. It wasn't just women who gossiped in
the queues for water: it was a community event.
On August 5 the drought bill was hurried through Parliament, and taps in
south wales immediately went dry between 7pm and 8am. There were fires
that couldn't be put out in parts of the New Forest, and some graphic
subsidence cracks appeared in mansions round Little Venice on my way to
work. But most people shrugged and got on with finding bricks to put in
the lavatory cistern or measuring the bathwater to the five inches
recommended by civil servants in Whitehall.
The media got into crisis mode, naturally, but we were never really
tetchy: there was no hunt for Those Responsible, as one suspects there
will be if things get really dry this time around. The sun had somehow
got through Fleet Street's green eyeshades. More than £500m of failing
crops and the threat to the Dartford Warbler had their share of
headlines, but the real punch was in wild rumours such as an alleged
secret consultation between department of the environment staff and (a)
mad scientists who put ice seeds in clouds and (b) Aboriginal rainmakers
in Australia. Rumours? Alleged? To everyone's joy, both stories turned
out to be true.
It had to end, of course, and it is fair to say that by August we were
beginning to get into that crotchety frame of mind which starts to
affect Greek taverna-owners and travel reps at the end of the season.
That is why there was cheering at Lord's cricket ground halfway through
the month when rain - what is this stuff coming from the sky? - stopped
play for a whole quarter of an hour.
The great instrument of climate change, though, never to be forgotten by
those of us who were there, was Britain's very own Rainmaker, Denis
Howell, who was finally appointed minister of drought co-ordination by
Jim Callaghan under the hasty new Drought Act.
The feeling among political commentators was that he must have done
something awful to have been handed this poisoned chalice, but it proved
to be one of those mythical cups, like Zeus's, that never run dry.
Howell threatened rationing until December, and Lo! The rains came. They
continued for 10 days until Howell was nicknamed the "minister for
floods". He was helped, of course, by that other great British invention
for wrecking the weather, August bank holiday. It poured.
MW
How to save water this summer: Twenty tips for surviving the drought
Don't run taps to rinse washing up, clean your teeth, etc. It sounds
obvious but a tap left running can use around five litres a minute.
Multiply that by 60 million Britons and that's a lot of unnecessary
water down the drain.
Keep a jug of water in the fridge rather than wait for the tap to run
cold. Obvious, again, but can you really say you haven't done it?
When you're making a cup of tea only use the amount of water you need.
Modern kettles don't need filling to the top, and many have measuring
graphics on them, just in case you can't work it out for yourself.
Never leave a tap dripping - it can waste up to four litres a day. If
the tap needs a new washer, it's easy to sort out. The washer will cost
around 50p and replacing it is quite a simple DIY job, honest.
For those of you who wash your car use a sponge and bucket. A hosepipe
is even more decadent than cleaning it in the first place.
The loo accounts for 30% to 40% of household water consumption, so it
qualifies for three entries on our list. First off, do you really need
to flush it every time you go? Ken Livingstone thinks not and last year
suggested Londoners follow his lead. If it's good enough for Ken, we
suggest you try it too.
Put a plastic container or "hippo" in the cistern, which restricts the
amount of water used with each flush. Using an ordinary brick instead
will save you the price of a hippo (£6.99 for three, from 01989 766667,
hippo-the-watersaver.co.uk <http://www.hippo-the-watersaver.co.uk>), but
the brick will slowly disintegrate over time, blocking up your water system.
Install a dual-flush loo - the nuclear option in the loo. It has short
flushes for a pee, longer ones for everything else. You'll find
dual-flush loos at most decent plumbers merchants.
Now to bathing: try to shower instead of having a bath. You will use
two-thirds less water for a five-minute conventional shower - though
power showers can actually use more water than a bath over a similar
period. The really conscientious can have flow restrictors fitted on
their shower. And as the plumber is already there, you might as well get
them to install low-water-use spray taps while they're at it. For a
selection of water-saving sanitary ware, try the Green Building Store
(01484 854898, greenbuildingstore.co.uk
<http://www.greenbuildingstore.co.uk>).
In the garden, plant Mediterranean species such as lavenders, rosemary
and cistus. Lots of typical English herbaceous varieties will withstand
drought, too, providing you mulch the soil during summer . This means
putting a layer of bark, grass cuttings, manure, even gravel on top of
the soil to trap moisture in the earth, or at least slow down
evaporation. For suitable plants, try Beth Chatto's nursery (01206
822007, bethchatto.co.uk <http://www.bethchatto.co.uk>).
When the lawn goes brown, don't panic - just leave it be. It'll come
back with the rain in the autumn. If that brown patch of earth really
bothers you, you can always get rid of the lawn altogether.
If you've got a garden sprinkler, stop using it. A sprinkler will use
1,200 litres per hour and 3.2 million people own one in this country -
so if we all keep doing it, it's very bad news for the reservoirs.
Instead of using a hosepipe on the garden, collect water in a water
butt. This is basically a plastic container that you attach to your
downpipe from the guttering of the house. It's easily attached - you cut
away a bit of the pipe and hey presto. They come in a range of shapes
and sizes, with natty little galvanised versions for the smaller home.
Most local authorities offer discounted butts from around £20. For a
wider range, check out the online gardening site Crocus.co.uk
<http://www.Crocus.co.uk>, or real greenies might enjoy the range of
ex-industrial food barrels at the Centre for Alternative Technology
(0845 330 4592, cat.org.uk).
Use "grey water" in the garden. This is old bath and washing-up water. A
reasonable amount of detergent in the water is OK and recommended by
many gardeners, but try to vary where you put the water so you don't get
a build-up of detergent. Better still, use biodegradable soaps and
cleaners, or filter the grey water you use - a bucket filled with straw
does the job.
Rainwater "harvesting" is the posh version of a water butt. This is
basically a large tank (the bigger the better) that collects rain from
the house guttering and pumps it into the home, to be used for flushing
the loo. The harvester is often buried in the garden but can be
free-standing - providing you have a suitable place to conceal a
2,000-litre plastic container. A recent eco development in Somerset has
put the rainwater collectors above the back porch. Expect to pay from
£2,000 for a system. Details of suppliers from the UK Rainwater
Harvesting Association (www.ukrha.org). <http://www.ukrha.org>
Get a water meter fitted. Meters are often associated with higher water
bills, but this is not so: figures suggest that having a meter also
makes us more conscientious, and cuts average usage from around 160
litres a day to 135. Smaller households could save money, too: a survey
in the Severn Trent area found a metered, two-adult home might expect to
cut £200 from a normal bill of £340. Installing it, meanwhile, is free
and it gives you the comfort of knowing that you're paying only for what
you use, and not subsidising that selfish bloke down the road with his
sprinkler.
If you wait and use a full load for your washing machine or dishwasher
you could save approximately 0.6 litres of water per person - half-load
programmes use more than half the amount of water of a full load. Also,
always buy AAA-rated appliances, that use water most efficiently
-they're competitively priced so you shouldn't be out of pocket.
Install a grey-water system, and reuse water from the bath, shower and
washing machine to flush the loo. Systems costs from around £1,100,
installation from £1,500 upwards. Try Gramm Environmental (01892 506935;
grammenvironmental.com <http://www.grammenvironmental.com>).
Hassle the water company. While water bills go through the roof, water
companies continue to make profits and waste hundreds of thousands of
litres through burst pipes and rotten Victorian mains. Thames Water
loses about a third of the water it puts into the system. Its 2004/ 2005
profits rose by 6.1%. Contact the watchdog Water Voice (0845 039 2837,
watervoice.org.uk <http://www.watervoice.org.uk>).
DM