Flushed with success

During the week our pressure pump died. For you city types, it's the pump that makes sure our rainwater is delivered with enough pressure to be useful. I was standing in the shower with hair lathered up when the flow of water slowly diminished to a thin, cold stream.
After much head scratching and dismantling of the old pump it was decided a new one was required.
So for most of the afternoon there was water in the tank and a bit in the pipes and that was it. And I began to ponder. How much I take for granted that lovely stream of hot, clean water, on tap. So many in the world have to cart water daily from a communal source and heat it over a fire.
It's not so long since, even in our part of the world, things were different. My Dad used to fire up the copper so Mum could wash with hot water every Monday and he'd do it on Saturday night and bucket water in to the bathroom so we could all have a bath. (Yep, once a week, all in, one after the other.)
One of my older friends told me that when she came to the Riverland  during the infamous 1956 flood things were pretty basic and that for a whole year she kept herself clean with just a basin of water. No shower or bath.
During my afternoon of no water I thought about toilets as well. I've always had a flush toilet even if it did have a chain to pull and the paper was of dubious provenance.
The house we live in now has a lane running along the back - commonly called the dunny lane - to make access easier for the poor dunny man who emptied the dunny cans from the lavatory located near the back fence.
I wonder about using about using precious, drinking quality rainwater to flush the toilet and love visiting my sister's loo, which has a wondrous system where there is a small basin over the cistern. You wash your hands and the water then runs into the cistern for flushing.
Before too long the new pump was installed and all was well. How grateful I am. A simple flush is a wondrous thing.