Splashing out can land you in hot water

THE fine summer that is so alien to Ireland has brought with it moral questions that we have not had to deal with before.

What do we do if we see the neighbours watering their lupins with expensive treated water, the type that comes out of our taps and that we are incapable of paying for ?

I never had any difficulty with water charges so long as there was a minimum free amount that would prevent anyone from dying of dehydration because they could not afford to have a drink.

Instead we got a great display of political opportunism, plus a bit of borderline thuggery, from all sorts of activists who faced down the spineless politicians who knew what we should do but didn’t manage to join together and stand up to the lunatic fringe.

In Ireland we do have a difficulty with informing on the neighbours. It is not considered very neighbourly.

So much so that it takes a very loud drunken party until about four in the morning before we will lift the phone.

So I was never too worried about the neighbours ever thinking badly of me. Until the hosepipe ban.

Here was my problem. I have a very large tank of rainwater at the back of one of my sheds which has been there since the days it was part of a working farm. I put a pump in it and have been hosing the flowers to my heart’s content and even washing the car.

It is still half full and there has to be rain some day soon. Now it never occurred to me that the neighbours might see this and inform on me. They are not that kind of people. But it did occur to me that they might think badly of me and that kept me awake in the small hours of the morning.

Surely they would remember that I never came down the country during the foot and mouth to ensure that there was zero possibility of me bringing the deadly disease to our part of the country.

They would know I am a responsible person. They know how anti-littering I am.

That said I am still on the verge of phoning and asking them to come and see my new pump except that it does sound just that bit too weird.

I had no idea that guilt, or concern for what people might think of me, played such a part in my psychological make up so I retreated into navel gazing to see if I could make some sense of it.

I do remember a schoolboy incident where I dropped a pencil on the floor and the teacher gave me detention for looking up her skirt.

She didn’t say that, of course. She just said “you know what you were doing”.

To this day I know with absolute certainty that I was 100pc innocent.

But everyone in the class thought I had been sleazy.

I am not making any great psychological claims here but it was the first thing that popped into my mind when I began my self analysis.

So just for the record, it is well worth having a rain barrel and buying a pump and that is what I was using. I did not break the hose ban. And I was not guilty of the panty hose incident either.