I had sloshed intothe roomand not noticed it was food ed

Chris is definitely not getting along with water this week… or is he…?

Imagine what it would be like living on a planet where there’s a substance, present almost everywhere, which, depending on its state, can burn your skin off, suffocate you in minutes or freeze you to death – and, when particularly volatile, has enough power to completely destroy entire cities.

Well, that planet is Earth, the substance is water, and I live here. Typical. That’s a great little piece of trivia though, isn’t it?

I mention it because water has played quite a large part in my life this week. Not that I hate water. I actually quite like it. Without it, beer wouldn’t be possible. Rather less importantly, it keeps us all alive.

I still don’t forgive it for this week though.

It all started, as most things in my life do, with a cat-sitting visit to another of my furry little friends – this one residing in a near mansion of a house whose kitchen had more floor space than my entire house and garden combined.

The only problem was that on this particular visit, much like my garden, it was covered in murky water and debris. It’s testament to how wide awake I was that morning that I sloshed three feet into the room before even noticing I was ankle deep in water and the ceiling had fallen down.

I’d actually walked into a flooded house once before, quite recently in fact, so I knew exactly what to do – and immediately did it. I ran round in circles with my hands on my head screaming “Oh no! Oh no!” That didn’t seem to make much difference though, so next I rang Plumber Jim, who advised me to pull myself together, find the stopcock, and wait for his arrival.

OK I thought, stopcocks are often located in the cupboards under sinks. I quickly waded across the kitchen to the sink and dropped to my knees to look in the cupboard. I’ll put it down to my state of panic that I dropped to my knees into a foot deep puddle of water, but I did, and when Jim arrived a few minutes later, he seemed more shocked by my dripping wet trousers than he did by the state of the kitchen.

A little while later, after Jim had found the actual location of the stopcock, turned the water off, and fixed the exploding toilet in the room above the kitchen, we sat with a nice cup of tea in the garden,

“Nice house, isn’t it?” I remarked. “Well, yeah, it was…” With that, it was back to my reality – I was looking after a beautiful house that was now partially destroyed, but at least the cat was OK, and technically it was him I was caring for, not the upstairs toilet.

So now you know why I’ve got the hump with water this week. I absolutely hate the stuff right now.

Ah well, column written, time for a nice hot bath and then an ice cold beer.

Hmm, hang on…

Chris Pascoe is the author of A Cat Called Birmingham and You Can Take the Cat Out of Slough, and of Your Cat magazine’s column Confessions of a Cat Sitter.