Reading Chronicle | Opinion | I'm a cash cow they won't let go down the plughole

Friday, 16th May, 2008

Published: Thursday, 24th April, 2008 10:50

I'm a cash cow they won't let go down the plughole

By Maurice O'Brien

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Reading's favourite columnist, Maurice O'Brien

ONE of life’s great inequalities involves water.

Were I an old woman living in a shoe with so many children etc, I’d be paying Thames Water the same (or, bandwise, possibly somewhat less) as I do now for residing alone in a suburban semi.

I always flush prudently, wash myself and my clothes regularly but never the windows or car, and God knows the garden hasn’t needed watering for years now.

But action was called for when this year’s chunky Thames Water envelope bellyflopped through the letterbox.

Obviously it took a while to sift through the junk publicity material; not to mention the begging letters to help sink wells in foreign parts where the rulers cannot quench their people’s thirst but always find the wherewithal to buy sufficient weaponry to mount several simultaneous wars.

Eventually I reached the nasty bit where you discover what you’ve got to splash out, and promptly started scanning through the remainder of the rainforest glade stuffed inside the envelope to discover how to get a water meter.

Now I’ve had a few calls lately from readers with families who tell me how eager the Thames Water boys and girls seem to be to persuade them to have a meter installed in their new homes, so I figured on that basis they’d fall over themselves to give me one.

There was some small print about the practicalities of attaching a meter to my mains connection, but I can remember the road being dug up for days and being left waterless for 24 hours while they laid modern, everlasting pipes, so there didn’t seem to be any problem there.

Thus, on February 21 I went online (oh yes I did) and applied for a meter.

Within minutes came the reply: “We will shortly arrange for one of our technicians to visit your property to investigate whether a meter can be fitted.”

Shortly? Two months on and communications between me and Thames Water have apparently dried up.

And I’ve got a sinking feeling I’m a cash cow they don’t want to let go down the plughole.

- TALKING of water. I should have spent last week cruising down the River Rhone, but there’s been so much rain in France that the locks were impassable and I was left stranded in Tilehurst.

Damn that global warming.

- THERE were numerous occasions when Tony Blair had cause to be grateful for the distractions created by the lavish lifestyle, pugilistic manners or sexual excesses of his Deputy PM.

Who’d have thought punchy Prezza would still be fulfilling his old diversionary role for the Clunking Fist? But the revelations about his bulimia battle bullied much of Brown’s multiple bad news off the front pages for a few days.

Who ate all the headlines?

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