Ah - the sweet, fresh smell of farming...

Courtesy of The Guardian

One way or another our water source has been contaminated this week. We first became aware of the fact when my shower smelled like cooked Pig Sty – not the kind of aroma you want clinging to your skin on a Saturday afternoon. Still, I’d bought a magazine with a rather smelly free sample of moisturiser and I think (after caking myself in many layers) that I managed to get away with it! We’re now drinking corporation water (purloined from kindly relatives) and my skin is very, very soft – though whether this is the added effluent in the water or the copious use of fragrant moisturiser I guess I will never be sure.

            So now, for the first time in ten years, I am using non-environmentally friendly washing powder. The kind that comes with special scents included – I believe this one is something like fresh air and white lilies. Oh and it smells delicious and it’s so exciting hanging my washing up and inhaling the artificial delights of scented shirts and sheets. I feel like a regular 21^st Century woman! And I feel terribly, terribly mean. My washing is cleaner, smells great and I’m polluting the environment – I’ll be buying veg in plastic bags next and leaving my Bags-4-Life at home. Or putting bleach in my toilet.

            Joking apart, this whole episode has reminded me how much we take clean water for granted in our comfortable Western lives. It’s now a year since the Cholera epidemic decimated Haiti and still the people suffer; Pakistan is again suffering from terrible floods and the situation in Bangkok and Ayutthaya Province gets worse each day. The people of Bangkok have particularly been in my thoughts these past few weeks. Please spare a thought for all the people across the World who suffer insanitary conditions and/or yearn for clean water whether as a result of natural disaster or the disastrous politics of their countries.

            Bangkok is one of our favourite cities and we engineer visits en-route elsewhere whenever possible (it’s not on any of the Manchester-France flight-paths so it’s now five years since we were last there) and the pictures and videos that we have seen of the disaster are a fitting reminder of why we love the city and, indeed, the whole of Thailand. In the face of the most desperate adversity the people still smile, still take the time for each other – their Buddhist philosophy and kindness shines through even in these terrible images. I just hope that next time we do visit, our favourite street-stall will be there selling DIY soup-on-coals (just on the corner, past the temple with the blue stars on the ceiling) and that we’ll still be able to enjoy a banana pancake for supper.