We really are hours away from anarchy...

[Chris71]

Yesterday for about 24 hours we lost our water supply. Thousands of homes across the Enfield area did, and although it was a bit of a pain we're only talking the home counties here, not flood hit Pakistan.

The water board put out bottled water at a couple of different points and when my OH wandered down to get some yesterday morning people were physically fighting over it. That's less than five hours into a water shortage in an area where you can just drive down to Tesco and buy a load of cheap mineral water or even simply pop round to a mate's house in the next postcode where the water main was intact. What the hell is happening to people these days? God knows what'd happen in a real emergency.

[Chris71]

Cas_P said:

Chris71 said:

Yesterday for about 24 hours we lost our water supply. Thousands of homes across the Enfield area did, and although it was a bit of a pain we're only talking the home counties here, not flood hit Pakistan.

The water board put out bottled water at a couple of different points and when my OH wandered down to get some yesterday morning people were physically fighting over it. That's less than five hours into a water shortage in an area where you can just drive down to Tesco and buy a load of cheap mineral water or even simply pop round to a mate's house in the next postcode where the water main was intact. What the hell is happening to people these days? God knows what'd happen in a real emergency.

So why didn't your OH just do that then and go to tesco? You're saying this but you guys went to get the free water too....

Yes, because it was a hundred yards away from the house and free. Tesco is a couple of miles away, she doesn't have a car and we weren't the ones figthing over it. Next inane question?

[Chris71]

AJS- said:

London is just full of weirdos.

I agree entirely. In the nicest possible way they're all a bit socially mal-adjusted. As someone said above the crisis mentality Londoners show in their driving is indicative of the rest of their lives. Everything is such a big stress.

Of course it could be worse than Enfield, I could be in Southgate...

andy_s said:

Risotto said:

What's happening is that we live in a country which has run out of things to worry about. Any minor upset causes mass panic simply because people are no longer exposed to real problems.

Too true. Plus, for the media, panic = profit.

+1 to both of those.

In a simialr way, that's why petty crime always winds me up - no one in this country needs to steal to feed their families. Okay, the nation might still be on the long, long slide from former greatness, but we've actually still got it pretty good compared to 98% of people on earth. Even in Enfield.

Where I grew up we didn't have mains water. It was all very civilised with an automatic pump bringing water from a well into the household plumbing, but every so often it would dry up for a day or so at a time in hot summers and we'd just nip down to the shops and buy some. Likewise, being out in the sticks we were subject to quite a few power cuts in the winter. We just lived with it; I hasten to add that was Devon in the '90s, I'm not talking the mists of time or a far away land (shut it Blib ).

[Chris71]

Cas_P said:

If I saw people physically fighting over that I'd become very concerned about the area I lived in, and probably move.

Now that I do agree with.

It's actually a pretty reasonable area as North London goes, but people round here wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire. I live just down the road from an ambulance station and I regular see people refusing to give way to ambulances, for example. It really is the sort of place where people consider a few seconds of their commute to be worth more than someone else's life.

Unfortunately living in this particular area is the least of many evils.

[Chris71]

CaptainSlow said:

I think it's due to the area you live in and its inhabitants. The riots at the local Ikea would have been a good pre-warning.

I heard about those. Before I moved here though.

It's odd, I always thought - not really being into furniture personally - that taking the Volvo down to Ikea was an archetypally middle class thing to do.

To be fair that was Edmonton. I'm told by friends who've been here longer that our side of the A10 is vastly preferable. I appreciate that's a relative term though.

[Chris71]

CrashTD said:

Kindersley said:

Enfield is a toilet. People live there because their poor and cannot live in a better part of london. Its like a special needs center crossed with a Dole office /immigration center.

people are unable to think for themselves these days... I can imagine them turning up in their "Ugg" boots and tattoos looking like obese Jordans with a fresh spray on tan . Their B/f's looking like a fall out from a Scoobynet meet, all wondering how to get the water home.

let them die ...who cares?

Quite scarily true, especially enfield town.

The sticky bits are a lot nicer though

Dunno, wouldn't say no to one of the Elizabethan houses on Gentleman's Row. Particularly the one with the nice shiny Aston parked outside. That is probably the only part of Enfield I'd consider living in if it wasn't for necessity though.

And Blib - a hay cart - really? Please! We had threshing machines by the time I left Devon...

[Chris71]

madala said:

AJS- said:

London is just full of weirdos.

......Enfield is not London......

It's inside the M25, that satisfies the criteria for me. That and the fact there's a long, uniterupted chain of gridlock, misery and crime between here and the Thames.

[Chris71]

Blib said:

Cross my road and you enter Barnet.

Is that some form of threat?

[Chris71]

Completely O/T, but seems this thread seems to be attracting a lot of other Enfield people can I just put in a quick plug for what was originally called 'the Enfield meet' and has now sort of morphed into the 'a few miles from Enfield in Hertfordshire meet' in Letty Green on the 12th of September:

http://www.pistonheads.co.uk/gassing/topic.asp?h=0...

As you were...