Friends arrived last week to find me in a mudhole, inside a cave-like tunnel into the hill, fiddling around with our spring-fed water supply. Hearing their car, I slithered out to greet them, covered in slime like a monster from the deep. It would be natural to say this took them by surprise. It did not. They know me.
Since infancy I’ve loved playing with water. Every river I could dam, every channel I could dig, every pond I could drain or fill, every stream I could divert, every castle wall I could build against the encroaching tide, seemed to point to a promising career as a water engineer. Sadly I showed no talent for any of this; and, later, the maths bored me. I just loved digging, damming and diverting: a master of my little water world.
Maybe that’s why when I bought a house in rural Derbyshire, I fell at once for a place called Spout.
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