It is about the size of a large pocket watch, heavy in the hand, cast in brass that has darkened to the colour of strong tea. Behind a cracked glass face, a row of small dials records the water that passed through it: cubic metres on the largest, litres and tenths of litres on the smaller ones, each needle stopped at the moment the meter was taken out of service.
Counting a household
For decades this meter sat in the basement of a house near the canal, measuring every bath, every kettle, every wash and every leaking tap. Someone from the water company came to read it once a year, crouching by torchlight to copy down the numbers. The household paid for what the dials said. Nobody else looked at it at all.
It counted every bath, every kettle, every flood. Somewhere in those numbers is the arrival of a baby, with its extra laundry; a summer drought, with its careful watering cans; a burst pipe one January, with its sudden leap on the largest dial. The meter did not know any of this. It only turned.
Nobody reads it anymore
Meters like this are mostly gone now, replaced by digital ones that report themselves. It is more accurate and nobody has to crouch in a basement. But something small has been lost: the idea that the water arriving in your home was measured by a mechanism you could see, touch and understand.
This one was rescued from a skip by a neighbour who liked the dials. The needles are stuck now, frozen on a number that means nothing to anybody. It sits on a shelf, counting nothing, looking exactly like what it was: a small brass witness to a household’s daily life.
It counted every bath, every kettle, every flood.
