Wednesday 19th October, 2016                               1700

Well Tuesday was fun!

I sat and waited for the water to be turned back on (they had shut it off overnight which was damned annoying seeing as they don’t work after about 1830 so there’s no need to) and just before noon I heard the welcome spluttering of water dropping into a bucket. Time to ablute.

Sat on the throne, brushed my teeth and then turned on the shower. The pressure wasn’t up to scratch and the water remained cold, so I went to the kitchen  to see if there was a problem with the gas. Nope, I probably needed to turn the bathroom sink tap on as well to get a decent flow of water through the boiler. Back to the bathroom.

By now the water had stopped. Unbelievable.

No shower for me before work then, meaning a foul mood until the water came back in the evening perhaps? Except it didn’t. I had dirty pots as I hadn’t been able to wash them as well as not being able to clean myself. The roast pork was off the menu as I didn’t have a decent amount of clean water to boil the vegetables (that’s tonight’s dinner now), just enough to re-use the soiled small saucepan to boil some new potatoes. My evening repast was a gourmet plate of spuds and luncheon meat.

Just to improve my humour, halfway through the evening the internet went pop as well. This whole situation is really hacking me off now. I can’t plan anything by way of a meal unless it doesn’t require water and I can’t even be sure of at least having some entertainment to take my mind off it. I can’t wait for them to finish the piping.

Stone me if the internet didn’t come back online at around midnight! Now there’s no way there was anyone in the university’s IT room at that time of night so it had to have been the service provider. I honestly thought that by moving to a provincial capital I had left power, water and internet cuts behind out in the sticks of Chizhou but clearly not.

I wanted to go shopping reasonably early this morning, with a day off I harboured ideas of inviting Suzy and Sheila to share my roast pork. However, I wasn’t going out after not showering for two days. If they were going to turn the water on when they went for lunch then I was going to be under that shower in a flash before it went off again!

Sure enough, it came on and I became Usain Budd. The toilet hadn’t been a problem as I had shepherded the water I still had in one of the buckets so I was able to jump under the shower and get gloriously clean. I even had a wet shave in there, by now I was growing a white beard that looked positively trampish.

Still in my bathrobe, I went to the kitchen and filled the sink with hot water, replenished the buckets and washed all the dishes. The water even stayed on long enough to be able to pre-fill saucepans and a plastic bottle for cooking tonight.

By one o’clock we were dry again but at least I knew my dinner was safe and I felt fresh. What’s the betting I won’t be able to shower before I leave in the morning? And a pound to a pinch that by the time the bus gets me home again I will have missed the lunchtime water bonanza. My only hope is that just maybe they will have completed the actual pipework by then but I don’t hold out much hope, they don’t appear to be particularly industrious workmen.

Anyway, I did get to the supermarket. I bought a large lump of pig to turn into ham, loads of my online shopping arrived yesterday when the girls brought it to class - including the all-important pickling spice. I shall have ham by Sunday should I so wish.

I have no idea why but when I went to the bus station there were hundreds of school kids arriving in a steady throng. I must time my trips to avoid lunchtimes in future because it did nothing for my temper. They just barged past, pushed in and generally instilled in me a rather homicidal demeanour. Some of the local schools were very nearly a pupil or two short this afternoon. What made it worse though was that all the buses that pulled up were already full to the gunwales with small people attired in school uniform jackets. I stood for forty minutes as bus after bus after bus came and went, departing with even more air squeezed out of them as the ants squashed in as tight as a Scotsman’s wallet. Apologies to any Scots reading, I know you’re not stingy, you just spend all your money in the pub the night you get paid! I shall now go into hiding.

Eventually a bus came along bereft of kids and I even nearly bagged a seat. I was beaten to it by someone who could have been a uni student. They really don’t give up their seats here unless you are heavily pregnant (I could pass for that with a wig) or so old as to be about to croak it.

It is amazing that my life now revolves around shopping trips and planning my meals. Because of my limited cargo-carrying capability I have to go every chance I have and with work days alternately finishing at lunchtime or in the evening I have to schedule proper cooking one day and quick nosh the next. If I had the money I would buy another chest freezer, that was so handy for batch cooking. Of course life would be so much easier (and cheaper) if I simply integrated in a culinary way and ate noodles every night.

Looking on the bright side, being unable to take a shower every day means I probably won’t need to pay for a gas top-up before next payday. I spent a fortune on Taobao buying food so I may struggle, my UK debit card still hasn’t turned up.