Running out of water. Hygiene habits over the years.

As the warm sunny weather continues I read that we could run out of water in the UK!! How is that possible in a country famous for rain? After all, I have Spanish friends who seriously believe we don’t have summer here and certainly don’t go to the beach! Wrong on both counts! Even before global warming came along we used to go to the beach as children and splash about in the sea. I have photos to prove it. Mind you, it was the Irish sea which I later was told was warmed by the Gulf Stream current, unlike the North Sea, where your feet could turn blue as you paddled. That didn’t stop people going in it though. 

Anyway, here’s a link to an article about water shortage. Of course, much of the problem is down to water companies not having maintained the system and losing vast amounts of water to leakage. 

Here’s an interesting statistic from the article: 

“UK households use more water, mostly on showering and bathing, than other comparable European countries, at about 150 litres a day per capita. For France the average is 128, Germany 122 and Spain 120 (although in Italy it’s 243 litres a day).” 

So Italy is ahead of all of us for freshness and cleanliness. But we are pretty clean. 

Years ago my Spanish sister told me about her daughter (now in her thirties, which shows how long ago it was) coming home from school very upset because some of her small classmates had taunted her for her half-Englishness, on the grounds that the English were known to be dirty as they didn’t shower every day!! I thought this was quite rich as I could remember a time when not all Spanish homes even had running water. My sister’s response to her small daughter was to advise her to tell her friends that maybe the English didn’t shower every day but at least they had a good wash! 

All of this had Phil and me reminiscing about our childhood when it was accepted as the norm that you had a bath once a week. Many families had a designated bath-night. We knew families where it was usual for the bathwater to be re-used, family members taking turns. After all, we mostly relied on an immersion heater for our hot water and it was quite common to “run out” of hot water. We also knew a number of smelly children - almost one per class - but that was largely down to unwashed clothes as much as unwashed people.

The girls’ grammar school I attended was in a brand spanking new building, considered state of the art as it had showers in the PE changing rooms! Such an innovation! When I went to university my first year landlady told me my rent entitled me to one bath per week. Already in the late 1960s this seemed a little unhygienic, even with a “good wash every day”. I used to make use of the facilities at the Student Union building - a bath with as much hot water as you liked, and a hairdryer, all for a reasonable price. I doubt that such facilities exist nowadays! 

Thinking of heatwaves and lack of rainfall, here’s a picture indicating the extent of wildfires in Spain and Portugal. A friend of ours is mourning the destruction places where she has walked the Camino de Santiago.

And here’s a photo of wildfires in Canada, where they are having wildfires break out in places where it has never happened in the past. 

In the meantime, I am just happy to hang my washing in the garden, confident that it will dry quickly for me.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!