Things that go bump in the night

It is occasionally possible to forget that in our relatively civilised house, we are in the middle of Delhi. Unfortunately, those times do not include between dusk and dawn.

On my first trip to India, I travelled without the benefit of ear plugs. The result was that I slept on alternate nights. Every other night, I would lie awake plagued by mosquitoes, heat, the cacophony of rickshaw horns and, most frequently, the howling of stray dogs.

So far, it's been too cold for mosquitoes and heat; we are sufficiently off the main road for the horns to be unremarkable but the dogs are a different story. Everywhere in Delhi, there are mangy, pathetic looking dogs stretched out on pavements napping in the sun who look at you reproachfully but unenergetically if you presume to go near enough to disturb their slumber. At night, fuelled by a long day of inactivity, they all seem to band together to discuss their takeover of the city and the noise is infuriating. Even the earplugs don't entirely drown them out.

When we first moved in, still new to the sounds of the city, I was very puzzled to hear what I was sure was the sound of marching bands. Every morning around 5.30am, I would wake up to the sounds of souza, drummers drumming and pipers piping. Did Delhi really go on the march each morning? I was rather worried I was imaging it and took a few days to pluck up courage to mention it to Jamie who appeared not to have noticed it. It was only when I found out that Republic Day was about to happen that I realised what I could hear was early morning rehearsal. Fortunately, post event, the morning marches have ceased although every now and again, I feel sure I can hear them at it.

Once the morning marching stopped, wedding season began. Periodically, we are roused from our post prandial stupour by the astounding hullabaloo of the ramshackle wedding bands who march up the streets in their once white uniforms and red tinsel lined turbans. I assume they are paid by the bridal party to leave as soon as they arrive at their destination.

The last of the major sleep disturbers (if you leave out the children) are the peacocks who are rapidly losing their charm. The dawn chorus sounds like cats being strangled. They make so much noise that they invariably wake up Toby who can then be heard on the monitor saying "cats say miaow, miaow, Eliot, can you hear the cats?". Poor Eliot, woken up by his brother rather than the peacocks can never resist the opportunity of correcting the offender "No Toby, not cats, peacocks".

Water

When we arrived in Delhi, we were staying in a guest house which, despite costing more around £100 per night, was little more than a glorified backpacker hotel. Hot water arrived only if the guest house staff had remembered to turn a tap on outside the rooms. If they had, you could stand under a dripping tea bag with one hand on the taps as boiling water came out for a few minutes and then got progressively colder as the small immersion heater supply got used up. If you were quick, there was enough water for two showers. Toby was bathing in a bucket before sunset in order to catch the last of the day's warmth in the unheated rooms (see above).

We were very much looking forward to moving into our house with permanent hot water and our own towels. On our first night in the house, our first night in our own bed for two months and after a day battling mountains of dust left by the builders, I started to run the bath for the children. No hot water. We filled the bath up a few inches using boiled water. Time for us to go to bed and by now we were very cold and very dirty. Jamie and I eyed the small immersion heater doubtfully. "That's not going to do two showers worth" I said, ever optimistic. "Well, let's see if we have hot water in our bathroom" he said. He turned the tap on. Sure enough, no hot water. By the time we had fiddled around with the taps, there was no water anywhere except in the kitchen. We couldn't even flush the loos.

The landlord was called in the next morning by an angry and unwashed me. He called the plumber and after they had fiddled around for a while, I was called in to verify that not only was there water but it was hot. I was told to switch on a pump on the first floor balcony which would pump water around the house and also told to switch on an overflow alarm outside in the ground floor courtyard and switch everything off again once the alarm went off. I was told I needed to do this for a maximum of 20 minutes each day. I took a shower immediately but by the evening, despite having switched the pump on, there was no water of any kind. I could hear that the pump wasn't working.

Landlord and plumber arrived next morning to fix the pump. By the evening, no water although I could hear the pump working away. I had switched it on for 20 minutes in the morning but the alarm hadn't gone off and worried I would flood the house, I'd switched it off again.

The landlord was called again. He promised to come over again with the plumber. The next day, he guided my use of the pump. Ah yes, as we had 8 builders living in the back of our house, we were probably using rather a lot of water so maybe 20 minutes wasn't enough. Also, had he mentioned that the timing of the pumping was crucial? No, that apparently crucial information had not been passed on. It transpires that municipal water is delivered twice a day in the morning and the early evening. If you pump all the morning water up, you can't pump again until after the evening delivery.

Fully informed, we now do have running water. The pressure is lousy and the immersion tank only allows the bath to be filled to a depth of three inches (I have no idea how the landlord thought anyone was going to fill the enormous sunken bath he had been planning to put into the master bathroom before we stopped him). I think the pressure will improve once it gets hotter as the water will already be hot by the time it gets to the shower without the use of the immersion heater so we can mix in more cold. By then, we are told, it will be impossible to take a cool shower and the water will be too hot to use. Wonderful.