WATERY THOUGHTS

Brought once more to the fore of his mind while abroad, Alexander McCall Smith ponders the fortunes of having fresh, clean water running from our hills

Alexander McCall Smith thanks heaven for Scotland's fresh, clean water from the hills

This is being written from the southern tip of India. On my desk is a bottle of water, its label typical of those you see on many bottles of drinking water. These often feature a mountain, snow-capped perhaps, with a cascading river. The image is one of purity.

There is no shortage of water in my immediate surroundings. This is no arid Rajasthan; this is Kerala, which is tropical and lush. The ocean pounds the sand a few yards away from my veranda; there are active fountains on the walkway behind the cottage; there is a swimming pool carved out of rock and filled with crystal clear water; everything is green.

And yet, this is a country where millions have limited access to clean drinking water. The taps may run freely in this cottage, but to drink from them is to risk discomfort at best, and prolonged illness at worst.

I learned that lesson in Colombia when I drank a glass of tap water. I did so unthinkingly – at least until I neared the end of the glass, when I suddenly remembered where I was. The feeling was a curious one – akin to how you must feel after you’ve drunk the proffered hemlock and think, ‘Well, that’s that – there’s not much I can do’.

Sure enough, the water had its effect a few hours later and I began a two-day period of intense misery, sometimes tipping into real agony. That lesson was absorbed, and now, whenever I am in a place where the tap water is not potable, I am scrupulous about avoiding it. Brushing one’s teeth at the tap may be enough to make you ill; singing in the shower is also inadvisable, as it may not take more than a few drops to do the damage.

We take water for granted in Scotland. Not only is our tap water safe – wherever one is on a mains supply – but it is usually soft. London has its attractions, but its water is not one of them. There, the water is palpably hard. I will drink tap water in London, but through clenched teeth, trying not to think of how many times it has been recycled. Cups of tea in London often have a layer of scum floating on top. I imagine that is calcium carbonate, or something equally innocuous, but it’s not an encouraging sight.

One does not want to be smug about one’s water, but in Edinburgh, our water is above reproach, coming straight out of Pentlands reservoirs, and from the sky before that. It has a touch of chlorine added to it – a cook’s pinch – and you can remove that with an appropriate filter. It has no taste, as water should.

In Scotland there are rather more people than one imagines who don’t have access to a mains water supply. Being in this position in Argyll brought it home to me that it may be quite difficult to ensure a good supply of pure water on a farm or country property. In our case, when we bought the house there was an untreated water supply obtained from a burn half a mile up the hill. This water was brought down in a buried hose, and it tended to block and occasionally freeze. We decided to drill for water – not an inexpensive option. Even with our astonishingly high rainfall (over 100 inches a year) we only found a very feeble supply. Geology, apparently, makes drilling a good borehole a hit or miss affair.

We returned to burn water, and buried a couple of large tanks up the hill. That improved the supply of beautiful fresh water, straight off the mountain. But the deer were also interested in the burn, and that meant that although there was no human or agricultural source of pollution for miles around, there were plenty of e-coli, thanks to the deer.

That meant filters, including an ultra-violet system that destroys organisms by light. The problem with that was that the e-coli could hide behind tiny particles of peat, and so the lab results kept coming back saying, ‘Don’t drink this water’.

More particulate filters were then added, and the water was bathed a second time in ultra-violet light. Determined e-coli made it through this too, and it was only after we had installed a third ultra-violet treatment process that the water got a clean bill of health.

Then there is the issue of septic tanks. Again, we take sanitation for granted if we live in a town, but in the country it’s a different matter. Everybody I know has a septic tank story. They are usually grim and it is best, as the saying goes, not to go there. Yet septic tanks, with all their issues, play a large part in rural life.

But so do other things: fresh air, the hills, waterfalls that tumble down mountainside like white horsetails caught in the wind. All of those things make up Hugh MacDiarmid’s little white rose of Scotland that smells sharp and sweet – and breaks the heart.

MacDiarmid lived in a cottage in the country. I’m not sure where he got his water from, but famously he had a taste for Glenfiddich, which may, or may not be an effective way of sterilising water.

“The taps may run freely, but to drink from them is to risk discomfort at best