While water restrictions continue to make little or no difference to our water situation (mainly because no-one takes any notice of them), I may have come up with a plan to sort out our water crisis.
Those readers who have stuck with 6000 miles… through thick and thin (mainly thin) may recall that I also came up with a plan to sort the country’s electricity crisis way back in 2008. Yikes.
Sod the Government, the captains of industry and the so-called experts countrywide who all say that there is no quick fix. I think they’re blinkered. If everyone builds their own little power station, we’ll be sorted.
As far as I can remember from my physics lessons at school, all you have to do is make steam (water + heat), turn a turbine and Bob’s your uncle.
For your average Southern Suburber, with a pool (water) and a braai (heat), that’s surely not such a big ask.
Apart from the turbine bit.
That actually worked for a while. Until my wife found out.
There are easier ways to solve the drought. Just let me buy tickets for a cricket match.
I’m not a huge fan of cricket (sidenote to self: huge fan = potential wind shortage solution), but I do like live sport and so I thought I’d make a plan waaaaay in advance of… well… of today, and buy some cricket tickets for the kids and I. Mrs 6000 had other plans for this weekend, so I only needed three. And that was a good thing, because tickets for cricket are not cheap. They’re between 5 and 10 times the price of going and watching a football match.
But then, this is an international cricket match.
But then, they’re more than twice the price of watching an international football match.
I digress. Often.
I bought the expensive tickets, for a cricket match in the middle of February, in the middle of summer, in the middle of a drought.
Can you guess what the weather was like this week in Cape Town? Yep. It was lovely. Temperatures in the mid-thirties. Cloudless skies.
And can you guess what the weather is going to be like in Cape Town next week? Yep. You’re not wrong. Gorgeous. Temperatures in the high twenties. Wall to wall sunshine.
And, dear reader, can you guess what the weather is like in Cape Town today? The day of the expensive cricket match. The first cricket match I’ve ever bought tickets for. The first cricket match my kids have ever been to?
Grey. Wet. Chilly. Miserable.
FML.
On the positive side, it did rain today, meaning that there will be no need for anyone to water their gardens tomorrow (Saturday being one of the days you’re allowed an hour of watering). And that gave me an idea.
If you can donate enough money for me to buy expensive tickets to expensive international cricket matches on a regular basis, I think that we can basically guarantee enough rain to replenish our currently understocked local dams (42% full this week).
You can try this crazy scheme by donating some money to my cause. Just leave me a comment below and I’ll be in touch to give you payment details.
Give it a go. But give it a go soon, remembering that there’s a T20 match between SA and Australia on Wednesday 9th March. Yet another opportunity to sit on a damp grass slope and watch an empty field standing in the rain.