I hope you found time to do some hose-piping recently, as it might be the only chance you get for a long while.
After a few days of good weather, some areas are already introducing hosepipe bans.
Some water companies have banned hosepipes and others have asked customers to stop voluntarily while they work out how to stay solvent, which is a fitting word when you're selling H₂O.
The logic is sound on the surface.
It's hot. Reservoirs are stressed. People need to reduce demand.
Fine.
What's slightly harder to swallow is being asked to reduce demand by a set of companies that collectively lose three billion litres of water every single day through leaky pipes.
Why don't they introduce a leak ban and then we could water our gardens the easy way?
An average of three billion litres of water is wasted every day in England and Wales due to leaky pipes.
If you live near a leak you might report it, but with the way things are, you'd be better off keeping it a secret and setting up a drainpipe to dump it in your garden.
Being told to cut our usage by the wasteful water companies is like hearing that Coleen Rooney has told Wayne to watch how much he's spending.
Since privatisation in 1989, water companies in England and Wales have paid out approximately £50 billion in dividends to shareholders while running up debts of over £56 billion.
If some of that money would have been spent on repair kits we'd be much better off.
It seems odd that a business can spend most of the year making a profit from selling you a life-sustaining substance, but as soon as it gets warm they can fine you for using it.
There are ways around it.
In theory, you can use just as much water on your garden via a watering can as you would have done with a hosepipe, so the ban is a tax on convenience.
If we're going to have more hot summers we have to install an infrastructure that can handle it.
We need to have a set of pipes that actually run water to us so that we can use it.
Seeing as we also found out there's a move to stop people installing air conditioning, it feels like the future will be hot and dry and there’s not much we can do about it.
- Steve Allen is a comedian, broadcaster and author, for more from Steve, listen to his podcast ‘Steve N Allen Almost Daily’.
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