Got home last night to find that we had no water.  Not for once because I’d not paid the bill (although that may have been why the phone and internet also had been cut off).  The problem was clearly wider: the whole square was out, and continued out until the next morning.
 
It was, not to put to finer point on it, a complete bleedin’ nightmare.  No water to cook with.  Nowhere to wash the kids’ hands and faces or clean their teeth.  Toilets which rapidly became a health hazard (not sure you really needed to know that bit, but there it is).  And all without warning or time for preparation.
 
In my case, it only lasted overnight.  But it was a salutary reminder of how fragile are the props on which we depend.  It doesn’t take much – a broken water main, a mislaid Housing Benefit form, a rise in the interest rate – to throw your life completely upside down.  And suddenly you’re struggling, stressed, rowing with your nearest and dearest, eating out of tins, stinking and grubby.
 
I don’t know how many of you have seen the documentary Evicted, Brian Woods’ Bafta-winning study of three homeless families which was shown on the BBC late last year.  What the film does is to concentrate on the little things: children packing and repacking their suitcases, toys left behind in a repossessed house, tins of beans left on the radiator in the morning to heat through ready for supper.  It is those, as much of images of parents – literally – tearing out their hair, which really makes it real. 
 
The documentary will be repeated again soon.  Watch it.
 

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