Water, water everywhere, but not for a bath

WE CAN learn valuable lessons from every situation, no matter how dismal or scary it may appear at the time. If there’s one important lesson we can take from the long drought in the Cape it is never to take water for granted again. Every photograph of the earth taken from orbiting spacecraft shows a planet almost completely covered with water. No wonder it’s been called the Blue Planet.

Water is probably the one feature that makes our planet unique, and yet we have systematically abused this precious resource for centuries. We’ve polluted it with all manner of poisons, we’ve diverted it from its natural courses, we’ve wasted billions of litres of it daily with hardly a second thought.

I was interested to read an extract from a book by astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year on the International Space Station (ISS). (I wonder how much water each astronaut is allowed daily in orbit.)

On his return home after his stint in space, what he wanted more than anything else was – well, of course – water. He describes how he arrived at his home, walked in through the front door and out through the back door to his garden, where he stepped straight into his swimming pool without even bothering to remove his flight suit.

“The sensation of being immersed in water for the first time in a year is impossible to describe. I shall never take water for granted again,” he wrote.

One day, when the city’s supply dams are full once again and we’ve found alternate sources of supply, maybe we will once again be able to immerse ourselves in water.

It’s been a long time. It’s unlikely that we’ll ever be able to afford the luxury of regular baths again, no matter how much it rains. The City council has ensured that water costs almost as much as Champagne now, and not many of us can afford to emulate the late Marie Antoinette and indulge in that kind of bubble bath.

Some of us now have to travel almost 1 000km to remote areas of the Karoo to experience the luxury of a deep bath. Our far-flung families seem quite surprised to see how popular they have suddenly become.

One of the experiences that has stood me in good stead was sailing across the Atlantic from Uruguay in a sailing boat in 1979. Because we had only the water we could store in the boat’s tanks, we were each allowed only one litre a day.

On three occasions it rained hard and our immediate reaction was to strip off our clothes and rush up on deck to soap ourselves and rinse off in rainwater. Once the rain stopped abruptly just as we were soaped. We remained soapy until the next rain could rinse us.

Last Laugh

There was an accident at a building site and a well-dressed woman was pinned under a heavy girder. One of the site workers came to her assistance and said: “The ambulance is on its way, lady. Are you badly hurt?”

“How would I know?” She snapped. “I’m a doctor, not a lawyer.”