Hosepipe bans

So here's some stupid stuff:

In much of England, including London where I live, we are now under what is called here a "hosepipe ban".

For North Americans and others who haven't heard the term, this means you can't use your garden hose for making things wet. In particular, you can't do things like water gardens or wash your car with the hose (you can do these things with buckets of water if you want, just not with a hose).

So. This is the wettest country you've ever seen. The stuff is falling from the skies by the bucketload. It rains here more-or-less nine months out of the year. The idea that there's a shortage is so typically, amusingly British. They've got more rain than the rest of the world put together (well okay, but you get my point) and they can't seem to capture it for human consumption.

I've heard people say they put rain barrels in their gardens, for watering purposes, and they're perpetually full. You don't have to do anything special to collect a lot of water in Britain, just put out containers big enough to hold as much water as you want. Couldn't they dig some nice big reservoirs? People have been living here for several millennia -- you'd think they'd have mastered this by now.