4 hours and counting

Due to the magic of an internet dongle I'm writing while sitting on the floor in an empty Room 1, four hours before our first public performance. Let me describe it. There's a background hum of machinery, fifteen red lights glow from the very important looking water company "dashboard". And below the victorian walls and vaulted roof sits a compact arrangement of pipes and pumps. This all takes up about 15% of the volume of the room. We will occupy much of the rest. Above me dangles a fish. I think it's a carp, but it's made from plastic, bottles, corks, blue piping and bubble wrap. It takes light beautifully. Around the room are podia and display tables. On the tables are objects of domestic water use - sponges, toothbrushes, a rubber duck. On the podia - in 3 hours and 40 minutes time will be "holograms" of people from the old twentieth century, demonstrating washing techniques. The room will also be occupied by a the children of Allenborne school, tranported into the mid 21st Century, searching for the now scarce resource that is water. Films will flicker on the wall. The choir will wait in the borehole area one floor down, and Dan our film-maker and cameraman will wait in his wet suit to film live, the journey of the Girl through the tunnels and shrines below. Searching for what happened to the water.