It's Official

There we are then, water back in the source but the question is, is it drinkable? We ring up our local laboratoire d'anaylsis and make an appointment for someone to come out and take samples to be tested. The day arrives and the man arrives at the due time and takes from his car his little black case. All very official, after confirming that we are who we say we are and that we do live here he asks to be shown the source. Off we trudge and take off the cover, he peers in and looks at us and says; "that looks clean, shall we go to the house?" that can't be it surely?
Once back at the house he takes a sample of water from the first tap in the house which is in the cellar. Good job he didn't want the second as that is the cows watering trough! He puts the sample into three little glass tubes, seals them and then puts a nice label on them. Then we repeat the process at the kitchen sink. He then places one tube from each tap into a little machine with coloured lights on it. After a couple of minutes the lights changed colour and flashed, evidently this means that we have passed the initial test and now have to wait for the results of the laboratory tests. Meanwhile he tells us its safe to have a shower and use the water for cooking and tea as long as we boil it first.

Two weeks later we get the official letter from the laboratory with a printout of the results; we now have eau potable and we have the piece of paper stamped with the official seal and signed in triplicate so it must be true. They recommend that once a week we put 1 tablet of chlorine in just to kill off any bacteria that may start to breed again. Nice eh! But it is officially drinkable. Off to celebrate with a glass of water. Cheers.....