Waterless

Thursday there was a planned water outage in the Bryanston/Douglasdale area in order to repair damaged pipes. Somehow, this resulted in further damage to the network of water pipes - there were bursts in two separate areas - and we, along with the entire metropolitan substructure extending from Maroeladal to Dainfern, have been without water since Friday.
(I'm going on record, right here, with my opinion that South African tecnicians are, for the most part, incompetent by now. We're getting stupider, and in a big way.) It is now Sunday, and I have to say that getting along without water on tap has proved more difficult than I expected.

Water for the morning coffee we scraped from the icebox. I ended up rinsing my hair in the dogs' drinking basin. The floors have gone uncleaned and the dishes unwashed. If I want to go to work tomorrow, I'm going to have to devise a method of de-stinking myself, probably involving a Dettol-and-spirits spritz. Not a lot of fun.

But this is such a small matter when we consider that, in fact, water will be the next resource that humans fight wars over. If the United States survives another twenty years, we could well see unilateral engagements of the Iraq kind as a cover for procuring the water of life, instead of oil.

Do I think we humans will come to that? Yes, and further: I foresee the fairly fast (in planetary terms ) severe decline of humanity on this Earth. Besides lack of water, we will be facing increased earthquakes, inundations, hurricanes, melting polar ice releasing lethal gases, not to mention the murderous scramble for other resources (land, food..) which we shall shortly all be engaged in.
And we humans, like the masters of the universe we deludedly suppose we are, will rather take every living thing with us, before we give up our death-hold on this planet.

Pessimistic? Looks and sounds that way, but really, no.
I believe we need a die-off of the toxic dominant species here, and I have great trust that Life will not, in fact, allow us to take all of our fellow life-forms with us into oblivion.
Terrestrial life is starting to fight back, and joyfully I applaud. Have we learnt anything from our short, doomed and tragic reign of terror? I fully believe that some of us - enough, enough - have gained deep lessons in the Field of Life through the mistakes of this one species. If we start again, then, all is not lost. Embodied life continues; the great experiment flows on and on and on...