Watery Excuses.

Swe.Ge phoned me yesterday afternoon in great excitement.

"Half of the arse end of Ireland is on Joe Duffy's show!" he trumpeted. "YOUR arse end, Sweary! South county Galway! Braying about the water, they are. How it's not safe to drink! The local hotelier was on and everything. You have to listen!"

I didn't, of course. I was at work and besides, I've learned my lesson. I wouldn't listen to Joe Duffy even if he was proposing to my mother live on air. But basically, it seems that my friends, loved ones, and sworn enemies still festering in SoCoGaw are finally realising that the water is a funny colour... because, as much as it depresses me to report, it looks like something you'd catch out of the mouth of a yawning cow.

Now, look. Ireland is, apparently, a first world country, and there's no excuse, no explanation, or no gentle, saviour-like photoshoot of John Gormley's pretty, petty empathy that can justify why we don't have clean, safe drinking water. It is a basic need, both on an ah-come-on-are-you-fucking-braindead-or-what level, and on an investment-in-this-shithole-won't-happen-if-you-can't-turn-a-tap-without-puking-your-ring-out level. There shouldn't be a need for campaigns and Joe Duffy and locals having conniptions on the airwaves. There shouldn't ever be a time where "Boil Notice" becomes a valid term to bandy about at Council meetings. It's more than a shame we can't get something so vital right. It's an embarrassment, and one absolutely sinister at that.

Having said that...

There is a part of me that wonders how the water in SoCoGaw could have possibly gotten so much worse since I packed small-town backbiting for slightly-larger-town sniping. I remember phoning my Mam after I skedaddled to Cork, describing to her, in awe, the clarity of the water in the bath.

"Are you in it yet?" she said.

"No."

"Well, that would explain things."

But seriously. The water in South County Galway is almost unbelieveably murky, and it always has been. Avoiding the taps for an hour or so because the water was going through one of its brief, brown phases was a pasttime I oftentimes gave time to, and I don't remember anyone passing comment on it. At its best, the water is yellow - serial killer of kettles, bane of Zanussi appliances - but no one seemed to think it either lacking or noteworthy. Perhaps because no one from The Sticks ever left The Sticks to seek see-through water elsewhere? Nope. We were mad for emigrating, and often came home just so's to experience the fuzzy feeling of prompting tears on our leaving all over again. So we had experience of other shades of water, and certainly we've been guzzling the brown stuff for years and I don't think we can prove that it's killed anyone. Despite the fact that, on moving to Cork, I could actually see the bottom of the sink, I've never been able to get used to the taste of its tapwater. People tell me it's a vast improvement on the pond-filler you get drib-drabbing out of the taps in Galway, but my tastebuds don't concur. Water in Cork tastes... I dunno, lukewarm even when it's frozen. Water in Galway tastes of limestone, and the Burren, and freedom, and tadpoles. I miss it so.

Not that I'm disagreeing with my fellow Arseketeers. The water is only safe when boiled into the clear, bland stuff you get in Cork, and the rose-tinted wellies I'm trudging through my childhood in are no use to me in this argument; I accept that. The water has gotten worse, even as science and technology has gotten better. It's an absolute travesty. Why we're not getting too angry for something as pointlessly safe as the Joe Duffy show is beyond me.



By the way, I'm blogging through the haze of a migr@ine hangover. If you notice spelung mystooks, plaese 4give. I'm not myself.