Bearsy and I landed in Oz yesterday evening, Friday, at about 7.30 pm. We had left his father’s house at 7.00 am Thursday and departed the UK at 11.30 am. We were both pretty exhausted by the time we landed – the first thirteen hours flight had been boringly long, and noisily filled with the joyful and not-so joyful sound of young children whose parents seemed oblivious to the fact that other passengers might need sleep or even prefer silence. The second flight of seven hours had been almost blissfully quiet, but we were both unable to sleep.
My daughter met us at the airport with a food parcel as if we were refugees – she doesn’t share our opinion that the food in the UK is far better than we can get here! Nonetheless, it was a lovely thought since we had emptied the larder, the freezer and the fridge before leaving and it meant that we did not have to stop for basics or rush out this morning to buy food for today.
However, what we have yet to find in the UK is a shower to compare with the waterfall of hot water that we call a shower at home. We were both looking forward to drowning ourselves in hot water after the long flight…
Imagine the horror when we found that the wretched immersion heater had given up the ghost while we were away… we had a waterfall, but it was icy cold!
Bearsy got up at some God Forsaken hour this morning, phoned an emergency hot-water-repair firm, and paid the usual exorbitant sum required when essential items break down in out-of-business hours – and when else do such items ever stop working? They turned up promptly, replaced the element and told us we would have hot water in a few hours since we were on ‘Tarriff 33″.
By midday, we still had no hot water and called the man back. “Oh!”, he said, “I made a mistake. You are on Tarriff 31, which won’t start working until about 11.00 pm tonight….”
It is 10.35 pm and we are awaiting the return of that so often forgotten aspect of modern life – hot water straight from the tap. It’s 45 years since I lived without running hot water – and I know that most of the world survives without it – I am truly thankful that, in a few hours, I won’t have to!
Boadicea's Chariot 
What a horrid homecoming. Enjoy your shower!
The water heater here in Bratislava also gave up the ghost a couple of days after we arrived. Thankfully our friend’s landlord speaks German, otherwise my Slovak would have been stretched to its limits. But you forget how annoying it is to have to boil kettles to have a wash. I envied the plates in the dishwasher.
I could not agree more about English plumbing. It sucks, in some cases literally. I arrived about 3 hours ago and straight away switched on the geyser. I have just had a glorious long hot shower. While in London I made a visit to the National Archives in Kew. I kept half an eye open for academic looking red-heads.
Sheona
It wasn’t working at 11.15 – watch this space!
Sipu
There is much I love about England – the plumbing isn’t one of them!
If you were seeking an ‘academic looking red-head’ you might well have missed me! I only managed to get to Kew on a couple of Saturdays, I work upstairs in the Large Document area – and most people do not think I look like an academic… it has caused more than one or two misunderstandings in the past!
Commiserations! Mrs J and I had acomparable nightmare when on returning from a New Year break in Madeira the Danish house was buried in snow drifts and ice cold inside too.
Power shower units are easily available in the Uk, people just don’t fit them or would rather not spend the money! They are quite expensive, several hundred pounds.
Bo, how can you manage on one tank of hot water a day? If it only heats at night what happens if you run it cold? Is there no manual override ? Sounds a pretty archaic system! Don’t they have a more useful tariff available?
The boy had something similar in Brum, it heated overnight on the cheap from the central control but if you needed more there was a switch that manually turned the water on at the expensive day rate. At least you could get a supply!
I should be interested to hear why the food in Oz appears inferior to that of the UK, is it the selection and freshness of the supply or the cooking thereof?
I had to spend a few nights at a hotel in Pinghu, China. It was a cheap, seedy place with some of the worst showers imaginable. Even the bathroom itself was made of glass — not too bad when alone, but a bit embarrassing when sharing with someone else. The shower was also quite bad. We had to wait, for the first two days there, at least 20 minutes for hot water to come and when it finally did come it could not be controlled — hotter and hotter, to the point that it became unbearable. I also stayed at an inn in the country where they had only cold water with very weak pressure and sulphuric water.
We have two power showers.
I prefer the quiet of a non-powered shower though, so switch off the pump before I jump in 🙂
I can’t remember the last house I lived in that didn’t have a power shower or two, although we don’t have one here. I don’t miss them and they can be a dreadful waste of water.
Yes, Nyms the pumps can be noisy, we moved ours in the last house, because it was driving me mad!
Araminta– A “power shower” in UK-speak delivers only a fraction of the flow that an Aussie direct-on-main-water shower provides – check with Bilby. Even if you’re in a Green household with the recommended flow reduction device (which we’re not), there’s still more litres/minute.
Christina – there are tanks, and then there are tanks. Aussie tanks are usually on an 18/24 tariff, rather than the 8/24 we find we’re contracted to, but they’re big (I’ll look up the volume later, when it’s light – they’re installed outside, of course). Even when the washing machine is going full pelt after a period away and we’re both showering twice a day, we have never run out of hot water in 25 years in half-a-dozen homes.
Foodwise – Aussie (raw) food is (these days) inferior in quality and excessively expensive in the shops. It didn’t used to be, but it sure is now.
Restaurant and pub food in Queensland is always undercooked, whatever it is, watery and unimaginative / unappealing, whatever cuisine it purports to be, and is very expensive these days. Other States are marginally better but still crap. It’s a shame because Aussie “family restaurants” used to be great, and they and pubs used to be very cheap and good value. Portion sizes are now a fraction of what they were 25 years ago.
It’s all them left-wing foodies and their nouvelle cuisine!! 😦
… and yes, we do have hot water now. 😆
Bearsy, I didn’t have a power shower in Canberra, Perth, the Gold Coast, the Gold Coast Hinterland or Kingaroy (tank water only). Actually, I adored using Araminta’s power shower on home visits (quite a luxury for me), so no use checking with this Australian Bilby.
Er – there are no power showers in Australia, Bilby, because all hot water is at mains pressure. I fear there is an element of miscommunication or misunderstanding here. 😕
Er, well, I haven’t had the pleasure of showering in Australia, but I’m pleased you have hot water at last.
I think that Nym and I were addressing Christina’s point, Bearsy. She seems to think that power showers, which are obviously necessary in the UK are quite rare. This is not the case, since I’ve had them in various houses for the last thirty years or so.
Ah, that explains why I didn’t have one! However, I haven’t noticed any deficiency here, shower-wise, but I’m not particularly focussed on such things.
Ah – thanks Araminta (I will plead jetlag). I certainly had a power shower in two houses back in the UK in the 80s. 🙂
No worries, Bearsy.
Enjoy your shower! 🙂
In our recent trip around Oz, Mrs FEEG and I found a large variation in hotel showers. Some were up to American standards and some were like buckets with a few holes in the bottom.
Foodwise, we did not have a bad experience anywhere, although most of the time, we were looking at London West End prices.
Christina – 300 litres, roughly.
FEEG – quite!! 🙂
FEEG, West End prices?
We went out to lunch today at a pub not too far from where we live, and it was very good. We tend to go there pretty regularly but the prices are quite surreal but normal for this area.
We were a party of four, one bottle of wine and the bill was in excess of £120.00!
Bearsy, interesting, that is large, about 80 US galls, most are no bigger than 60 and generally smaller than that. here, which is bigger than most UK tanks which are in the 25-50 Imp gall range.
Interestingly we do not have the range of tariffs here and so just leave the tank on permanently, it is very well insulated! But electricity is very cheap because it is all hydro here in the NW.
Also here many water tanks are gas heated directly, not electric, but the water is at mains pressure in all of them because the are connected directly, not to a holding tank which do not happen in US housing at all. Bit of a pisser because if your water goes out you don’t have a single drop except what is in the loo’s cisterns. We end up going with a bucket to our stream.
You can get the power showers in the UK that bring it up to mains pressure but the cost in the region of £600, they sell a lot of cheaper models too with commensurate drops in pressure. Went though this big time with the ex!! Most homes do not have them, they tend to be the privilege of the well heeled and too expensive to run. I’ve never bought a house with one installed yet in the UK and it doesn’t seem to matter too much what you pay for the house either.
Amusingly, because we are on our own supply here and pump it ourselves it is at much lower pressure, so we have a very slow English type shower, it is impossible to get that type of pressure on a private well without spending serious thousands of dollars and installing a water tower, a bit of an embarrassment in the back yard! A decent well will set you back at least $5000min.
It is curious that there appears to be no standardisation throughout the civilised world, (well barely civilised world!)
I am somewhat shocked about the food situation, sounds bloody grim.
I think that we are very spoilt here, the food is beautiful quality, fresh and very reasonably priced.
I reckon that both the shops and restaurants of all types are roughly 50% of the UK prices.
Needless to say everybody still bitches!
Having a garden helps too, we currently are picking beans, french, runner and broad, tomatoes, salad leaves, English cucumbers, beetroot. The peas, strawberries and asparagus are gone. Onions, potatoes, broccoli, corn, peppers and aubergines just coming, leeks and winter brassica planted up for the forthcoming.
Makes one hell of a difference to the housekeeping, perhaps you should take up gardening.
I have just bought WILD sockeye fresh salmon for £3/$5 /lb, the whole fish, gutted and minus head. Needless to say I took 6 and straight in the freezer. Anyone tell me what it costs elsewhere at the moment? It is the height of the season, normally one would pay about $9.00/lb (£5.56) Last year I had pink salmon for 99c/lb. Good quality ribeye on offer about $3.95, generally $5.95-$6.95. I buy the whole ribeye and slice it myself. Of course if you insist on just two steaks you are going to pay a bit more but a monster freezer works wonders.
Is there any great reason why the food has deteriorated so? Don’t people complain?
Is it significantly better further south in the more temperate areas?
One suspects they are exporting too much of it to Asia, but why yours should be stale beats me!
It will be of little comfort (or interest) to y’all to learn that Scandinavian plumbing technology is superior. Hot water is delivered via the district heating system at mains pressure, ensuring drenching showers without fancy pumps and widgets. 🙂
Many thanks for all the comments. As Bearsy has said, the water is now hot! I wouldn’t mind your system, Janus!
The problem with food here, Christina, is that no one does complain – except a few like me and to no avail.
We have basically two supermarkets which claim to be in competition with each other. In practice they sell precisely what they want to sell and have increasingly been producing their own ‘brands’ and removing the competition brands to the higher and lower shelves before stopping stocking them completely. Almost every week one of my favourites disappears from the shops… The other problem is that stores are stocked from headquarters – with little regard for local preferences. All in all it’s a bit of a nightmare!
One has to ‘test’ things like parsnips by waving them to see how floppy they are! We have found a decent greengrocer that uses local growers, but generally fruit and veggies are picked too soon and have to travel too far.
I am interested, Janus. How is the water kept warm in the pipes from the central system all the way to individual houses. The lagging must be very effective and I would have thought prohibitively expensive. When you turn on the hot tap for the first time in a while, does it take long for hot water to arrive?
Sipu, the lagging obviously works. I’ve no idea how much is ‘lost’ en route. We have a holding tank which is kept hot so the delay is minimal. The local ‘heat-works’ in the village is fuelled by straw from the area. Efficient filters avoid air pollution too.
The joys of British plumbing, or lack thereof in most cases. The ancient guild of English plumbers decreed in 784 AD (shortly after the last Roman conduit failed in it’s duty), that no water heating system shall be connected to the main supply, and it remains so today, the reasons lost in the mists of time and prejudice. Meanwhile elsewhere in the World of the 21st century it is always possible to be assured of a good shower at decent volume and pressure without recourse to noisy and unreliable shower pumps
Even in my local corner of the backwoods where “Mains Water” is as unknown as “Municipal Drains” it is possible to set your well pump to 70 or 80 psi (mains pressure) and enjoy all the advantages so offered. A short trip to Canada or a quick search on the internet will also yield devices that are not flow restricted (as the code now requires), and incidentally, toilets that flush mightily and at a rate least 100% in excess of the prescribed 1.7 gals per crank.
Addressing Sipu’s question, houses here tend to be rather “spread out” and many (mine included) would require an unreasonable wait for hot water at the extremities usually reserved for unannounced visitors.
I am not quite sure why this concerns me as such a trifling inconvenience should work to shorten the length of their stay. However, the solution is a little device I haven’t seen elsewhere. When hitched into the hot water system at the outlet of the hot water tank and connected via a small diameter tube close to the most distant hot water faucet (tap?) it creates a loop through which the hot water circulates continuously, no pump, no electrical connection just simply convection. The result, instant hot water even in the in-law suite perched above the garage, almost a bus ride away in the woods. I imagine Janus’s village system is a loop continually circulating hot water, almost all hotels operate their hot water systems in the same way. Next week Nuclear Magnetic Resonance for the layman.
LW very interesting indeed!
I often wondered how they did it in hotels.
Bo, maybe I’ve got this wrong? But I was under the impression that you lived in Brisbane? Or is it in a satellite city?
Only two supermarkets?
I suppose you could get UK goodies on the internet if you want to pay the shipping, it is the only way I can get suet for Christmas puddings and mincemeat. Fortunately there are good shops here that sell good tea in Bellingham. Not that that is going to do much good for fresh veg.
I must say that would have me moving so fast it wasn’t true. Dallas was very poor food too, one of the reasons I was so glad to get out of the place, all cheap rubbish and too much spic grub. Memphis was excellent, all the fresh shellfish flown up from the Gulf on a daily basis, quite wonderful and peaches the size of baseballs.
I must say Australia does not have much of a culinary reputation, I’ve never heard anyone ever say that the food was excellent, freaky stuff like Emu steaks and kangaroo doesn’t do it for me. Worse still, anyone willing to eat merino sheep as they say happens in the outback is pretty well beyond help.
You have my commiserations! I’d move PDQ.
Hi Christina!
Many apologies for my sloppy English! We do live in Brisbane and there are plenty of supermarkets here, although few are as large as most UK supermarkets.
The problem is that Australia only has two main supermarket chains – Woolworths and Coles! There are independent Grocers, where, with luck, one can get ‘odd’ food stuffs. But Woolworths and Coles have the market stitched up and there really is no competition.
Both Woolworths and Coles stock British items at Christmas.
There was an excellent fruit and vegetable market in the centre of Adelaide, but so far we haven’t found similar here in Brisbane.
Now that explains it, both are low end suppliers, the real dregs, what a bore. Just about like having Aldi and Poundstretcher and sod all else.
You seriously have my commiserations, I just knew I never fancied the place, couldn’t live with that, food is exceptionally important to me, always has been. I expect it is the result of growing up in the country.
I guess I was spoilt, we had a deal with the local farmer when I was a kid, he had a truck farm and orchard on top of a dairy farm, we just used to help ourselves on the way home from school to veg and in the summer he had tomatoes and cucumbers and eggs from us. I expect I got too used to fresh being still alive so to speak!!!
It is a wonder that there is no competition commission breathing down their necks.
Thank you for the explanation.