I am not one to be intimidated by power and influence. I speak out fearlessly against the forces of repression and oppression.
As assiduous readers will know, many facets of the axis of evil have already been identified from Microsoft to BBVA and from That Woman to ‘Big Brother. But, there are other forces that I have decided need to be recognized for what they are: malign and deleterious to human happiness.
When I first came to Spain and Catalonia in 1958 the one thing that was impressed upon me as something absolutely essential was that I was, under no circumstances whatsoever, to drink the water. To me, on my first foreign holiday, this seemed very strange and, like the Spanish policemen with guns, it disturbed me.
I did not, I hasten to assure you, consider in an unbearably precocious way that the basic infrastructure of a country must be in a parlous state if something as essential as water was not available from the taps. Which, of course it was. I turned on the taps and water duly came forth. Cleaning of the teeth was fine with the stuff on tap, but drinking – no!
Part of me, I’m sure, merely accepted the obvious fact that I was in a foreign country and as H E Bates wrote about the past, “they do things differently there.” Like bull fights and squid and castanets and fans – things were different. Apart from a secret glass of tap water given to me by a sympathetic waiter (and never revealed to my mother) I was only allowed bottles of Vichy water con gas. To me it always tasted somewhat salty and it never really satisfied my thirst.
Probably, even then, every particle of my young soul was reaching out, inchoate but purposeful sensing that in Tossa de Mar I was tantalizingly close to Sant Sadurní d'Anoia the home of Codorníu and Cava – my drink of choice, after the via dolorosa alcoholic experimentation represented by the progression from cider to laager to port (!) to beer to sauterne to dry white to decent red to Cava. With, of course, a great deal of senseless, stupid self indulgent excess along the way!
Today in Castelldefels the water is something you clean your teeth with and not drink. The calcium level in the water makes it most unpleasant and, for someone used to drinking soft Welsh water from the tap and enjoying it, it is a salutary experience to find myself, willingly, buying bottled water.
The bottled water is generally cheaper than it is in the UK and is available everywhere but that, surely, is not the point. In a highly developed western European country it is simply unacceptable for the tap water to be unpalatable. It is not unsafe, just not drinkable.
The bottled water industry in this country is vast. I have yet to come across a family that would put a jug of tap water on the table at a meal. Everyone buys bottled water. Everyone! Imagine what that represents in money terms. And when you’ve thought about that, consider what numbers of people must be working in the industry. And not just in the industry but in all the ancillary trades and professions. A plumber will always say, “Water will find a way!” as the repair holds but water seeps out from somewhere else. Well, in Spain, water has found a way; a way in which, like the circulatory system in a body, it has become an essential self perpetuating conduit of money.
I think it is scandalous that people have to buy their water to drink. It is indefensible when it is necessary. If the empty headed rich want to pay pounds for a litre of water imported from Fiji or whatever, let them; but for an ordinary citizen to have to pay for drinking water is a crime.
One wonders what level of vested interest there is in this country to keep the situation as it is. I am sure that were there to be an investigation into the supply of water to homes it would make the squalid chaos of the present rail link to Barcelona look like a little local difficulty. And believe you me, you would have to be a very strong, confident and well armed person to admit that you worked for RENFE in this part of the world at the moment.
There should be no need for the use of bottled water except as a sure indication of mental deficiency on the part of the environment hating purchaser.
And then there are printers.
I don’t mean the human ones, though some of the so-called craftsmen who worked on the national press when it was situated in London should be remembered with contempt for their abuse of the trade union system with their cavalier contempt for truth and honour. I mean the home presses that we now have in the form of the ever decreasingly expensive gadgets called printers.
Those of us who grew up with the absolute magic (as we then thought it) of dot matrix printers are now aghast at the sleek multi purpose machines which sell for a fraction of what we paid for much, much less years ago. But the ink is a different matter.
We are now getting to the stage that it is cheaper to buy a new printer than pay for a new cartridge. The printer firms have responded by producing special ‘with printer’ cartridges which are more empty than full and run out in a depressingly short period. And it is a horrific experience to find the price of the replacement that you need.
It was thought at one time that the advent of the computer would produce a world which was ‘paperless’ – indeed the ‘paperless office’ was seriously talked about for some time. The opposite has been the case: the computer has destroyed more forests than a nation of scribes could ever have done. Spain, or at least the bits that I know, is a firm believer in the ‘print it out and then photocopy it’ school of bureaucracy. Think of the cost of the ink!
Once you have bought the machine you are hooked for the limited life of the bit of flimsy plastic that looked good in the shop. Nothing is compatible with anything else, even within the range of machines made by the same company, and everything costs the earth. In all sort of ways!
If we are oppressed and angry about the machinations of bottled water and ink cartridge manufacturers when they are self evidently in the wrong and taking us all for a ride- just imagine what must be going on in the pharmaceutical and oil industries.
Or don’t; and get a good night’s rest instead.
As assiduous readers will know, many facets of the axis of evil have already been identified from Microsoft to BBVA and from That Woman to ‘Big Brother. But, there are other forces that I have decided need to be recognized for what they are: malign and deleterious to human happiness.
When I first came to Spain and Catalonia in 1958 the one thing that was impressed upon me as something absolutely essential was that I was, under no circumstances whatsoever, to drink the water. To me, on my first foreign holiday, this seemed very strange and, like the Spanish policemen with guns, it disturbed me.
I did not, I hasten to assure you, consider in an unbearably precocious way that the basic infrastructure of a country must be in a parlous state if something as essential as water was not available from the taps. Which, of course it was. I turned on the taps and water duly came forth. Cleaning of the teeth was fine with the stuff on tap, but drinking – no!
Part of me, I’m sure, merely accepted the obvious fact that I was in a foreign country and as H E Bates wrote about the past, “they do things differently there.” Like bull fights and squid and castanets and fans – things were different. Apart from a secret glass of tap water given to me by a sympathetic waiter (and never revealed to my mother) I was only allowed bottles of Vichy water con gas. To me it always tasted somewhat salty and it never really satisfied my thirst.
Probably, even then, every particle of my young soul was reaching out, inchoate but purposeful sensing that in Tossa de Mar I was tantalizingly close to Sant Sadurní d'Anoia the home of Codorníu and Cava – my drink of choice, after the via dolorosa alcoholic experimentation represented by the progression from cider to laager to port (!) to beer to sauterne to dry white to decent red to Cava. With, of course, a great deal of senseless, stupid self indulgent excess along the way!
Today in Castelldefels the water is something you clean your teeth with and not drink. The calcium level in the water makes it most unpleasant and, for someone used to drinking soft Welsh water from the tap and enjoying it, it is a salutary experience to find myself, willingly, buying bottled water.
The bottled water is generally cheaper than it is in the UK and is available everywhere but that, surely, is not the point. In a highly developed western European country it is simply unacceptable for the tap water to be unpalatable. It is not unsafe, just not drinkable.
The bottled water industry in this country is vast. I have yet to come across a family that would put a jug of tap water on the table at a meal. Everyone buys bottled water. Everyone! Imagine what that represents in money terms. And when you’ve thought about that, consider what numbers of people must be working in the industry. And not just in the industry but in all the ancillary trades and professions. A plumber will always say, “Water will find a way!” as the repair holds but water seeps out from somewhere else. Well, in Spain, water has found a way; a way in which, like the circulatory system in a body, it has become an essential self perpetuating conduit of money.
I think it is scandalous that people have to buy their water to drink. It is indefensible when it is necessary. If the empty headed rich want to pay pounds for a litre of water imported from Fiji or whatever, let them; but for an ordinary citizen to have to pay for drinking water is a crime.
One wonders what level of vested interest there is in this country to keep the situation as it is. I am sure that were there to be an investigation into the supply of water to homes it would make the squalid chaos of the present rail link to Barcelona look like a little local difficulty. And believe you me, you would have to be a very strong, confident and well armed person to admit that you worked for RENFE in this part of the world at the moment.
There should be no need for the use of bottled water except as a sure indication of mental deficiency on the part of the environment hating purchaser.
And then there are printers.
I don’t mean the human ones, though some of the so-called craftsmen who worked on the national press when it was situated in London should be remembered with contempt for their abuse of the trade union system with their cavalier contempt for truth and honour. I mean the home presses that we now have in the form of the ever decreasingly expensive gadgets called printers.
Those of us who grew up with the absolute magic (as we then thought it) of dot matrix printers are now aghast at the sleek multi purpose machines which sell for a fraction of what we paid for much, much less years ago. But the ink is a different matter.
We are now getting to the stage that it is cheaper to buy a new printer than pay for a new cartridge. The printer firms have responded by producing special ‘with printer’ cartridges which are more empty than full and run out in a depressingly short period. And it is a horrific experience to find the price of the replacement that you need.
It was thought at one time that the advent of the computer would produce a world which was ‘paperless’ – indeed the ‘paperless office’ was seriously talked about for some time. The opposite has been the case: the computer has destroyed more forests than a nation of scribes could ever have done. Spain, or at least the bits that I know, is a firm believer in the ‘print it out and then photocopy it’ school of bureaucracy. Think of the cost of the ink!
Once you have bought the machine you are hooked for the limited life of the bit of flimsy plastic that looked good in the shop. Nothing is compatible with anything else, even within the range of machines made by the same company, and everything costs the earth. In all sort of ways!
If we are oppressed and angry about the machinations of bottled water and ink cartridge manufacturers when they are self evidently in the wrong and taking us all for a ride- just imagine what must be going on in the pharmaceutical and oil industries.
Or don’t; and get a good night’s rest instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment