If I had to describe my biggest transition, I’m going to say it’s getting water from the well becoming getting water from the tap. The well is a wonderful thing, the centre of the community, and it’s a powerful reminder that we rely upon the Earth for our daily water needs. And there’s only a 5% chance you’ll be set upon by a water ghoul if you draw water after 5pm!
The tap just seems TOO easy. I don’t trust things that are easy, like the infamous Spell of Devilish Handsomeness that promises good looks for a few magic words, but there are reams of fine-print that involve things like swapping your hands for feet and your feet for sweet potatoes.
Anyway, blocked sewers. Melbourne has sewers just like those that lie beneath the royal capital where I am from, although you can’t often smell these ones. Also, while I’ve heard some rumours that they’re infested with alligators (whatever they are), people don’t seem to be serious. The sewers of the royal capital actually are infested with mutated water lizard-dragons, with tough scales and long rows of teeth, so the job of cleaning and unblocking the sewers is one with a very short life expectancy.
People doing a similar job in Melbourne have it so terribly easy. They have unions, and fair working conditions. They get paid in money and not turnips. If a job is too dangerous, they actually have a great deal of recourse rather than being forced down into the sewers by the foreman standing over the hole with a club, threatening to thwack anyone who tries to escape. And to my knowledge- I’m no Melbourne professional drain repair person myself- I don’t think any of them have been eaten by alligators, whatever they are. Where I’m from, people are snapped up on the daily by mutated water lizard-dragons, with their elongated jaws, short legs, powerful tails and other things that no doubt make them nothing like alligators.
Everything in my realm is just better, you see. Including drains.