Tag Archives: water

August 28, 2024 · 19:11

Here’s a crazy thought

Today I got made aware that Oslo seemingly has a water shortage. I could not believe my ears (eyes too). You see, Norway is 1,100 miles long and for about 90% of that distance it enjoys the tropical rains (read: implied sarcasm) of the Atlantic all year long. So I was a bit surprised to hear this. Now I understand the predicament, but have no fear, I is here. So here is a crazy thought. What if the snow clearing services get one additional task?

You see, Oslo gets its water from lake Maridalsvannet. And that place is almost as dry as a funny story by many politicians. So here’s a thought. It gets its water from Skjærsjøelva and Dausjøelva. So, what if we add to this? Consider this image (below)

Now consider that Skjærsjøelva is around 3 KM, Dausjøelva is even shorter. Now consider that pretty much every town in Norway needs the snow cleared. They normally place it where nature takes a hold and dissolves it into the Atlantic ‘river’, but that is merely an easy option. There is a line of towns from Rotnes up to Brandbu with a combined stage of thousands of houses, clearing snow every year. So what happens if a ditch is created, at times ceramic pipes with a diameter of 2 meters. And it is strategically placed to catch the melting snow and rainwater. It could mean a few thousand hectolitres of sweet sweet water all going straight to lake Maridalsvannet. This is not done in a day, the main line would take a few years to do, but it would mean a steady infusion of water to lake Maridalsvannet. The ceramic pipes make it environmentally friendly, and the snows will not be ‘wasted’ on the Atlantic river (small pun intended). 

I wonder if it is was feasible. You see we think merely of the river, but there are more ways to Oslo that per boat (Vikings swear by it). And the question becomes how much snow is cleared from these places in a year. It might even require a little more effort.

As towns place their snow in a specific place, on a catchment field, the melting snow as well as any rain falling there goes straight towards the pipeline. Now I get that not all towns will have one, but Rotnes has a population of 20 939. I reckon close to 10,000 houses, roads and it all has to be cleared. That implies up to 10,000 locations with 20 to 40 pounds/square foot snow. It has to be cleared every year (some multiple times a year) and the roads collect even more snow. So whilst it is blown aside, it could be specifically placed. I foresee that optionally additional water filtering is required, but it could take care of the shortage. And Oslo has an estimated 1,588,457, which is around one fourth of Norway. Will my solution solve it? Optionally over several years, as the number of snow streams are directed towards Oslo, it might solve it, in the short term it merely lessens the pressure on Oslo. 

It is all my brain could conceive in an hour and perhaps Norwegians will laugh at this thought stating they considered this a long time ago. That would be fair, I merely go where my creativity takes me. And even as Oslo is currently the most visible example, I am certain it is not the only one. We need to move into what we did, into what we optionally need to do now. The world is changing and the people are setting pressures into places pressure was never a consideration. That is all I have to contribute this day.

So consider the image below and wonder how much water is stored there? Could any of it find its way to Oslo? Just consider how much water you see there. In spring all that water is gone and a lot of it isn’t going to Oslo (not sure where the image was taken), but it is likely fuelling the Atlantic.

Have a great day and as diner is about to be served (by me, for me) I am signing off.

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January 14, 2024 · 01:30

How desperate is our plight?

That was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the article. To be honest I passed it by initially. The mind didn’t quite catch the setting. The Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/09/greenland-startup-shipping-glacier-ice-cocktail-bars-uae-arctic-ice) gives us ‘Greenland startup begins shipping glacier ice to cocktail bars in the UAE’ gave cause for some unwarranted alarm. You see, I am all for start-ups. I am all for the path less trodden. I for one am about to offer a film script to Al Saudiya, an Islamic media mogul. Me, a non Islamic person. So I have seen a few things in my lifetime. But to hold your attention for a moment. The global setting of ice. You go to the kitchen (or galley) of a place, you open the freezer or ice maker and you scoop out the ice. It is a global thing. Not much to consider really.

So to see Malik V Rasmussen, the co-founder of Arctic Ice state that a place like Greenland can offer the rarest most pure version os ice is a little bit of a thing. You see, Ice, the solid form of water. A form that Summer Macintosh cannot swim through (her older sister Brooke can traverse that stuff as a champion) is a little weird. You see all over the world ice is set to the formula of H2O and keep that really cold (below -5C is best). There is no hidden setting, there is no secret ingredient. 

But then the mind took over (the ugly ‘what if’ side). What if there is more to this? What if micro plastics have now penetrated glaciers and water foundations? And the article seems to imply this with “These parts of the ice sheets have not been in contact with any soils or contaminated by pollutants produced by human activities. This makes Arctic Ice the cleanest H20 on Earth.” One could argue that ice makers require a new kind of filters, one the market doesn’t yet have and the UAE might be one of the few to offer its clientele pure clean ice. If that is so than this Malik V Rasmussen is sitting on a gold mine. Those who can afford to put true clean stuff in their bodies. As such people in Dubai, Riyadh, Monaco, Nassau and upper class places will soon be gagging for the stuff. This also implies that ice makers will come with a next generation filter settings to keep water as pure as impossible as recently. Optionally grounded on an additional separate water tank up to 1000 litres in glass or stainless steel. Rasmussen might have an edge, but for how long is anyones guess. I’ll be honest. I never gave it any thought and as such I love it. Something unexpected and novel? Sign me up. But the story under all this becomes. If we have sullied our own global water supply, how far from the swill have we fallen exactly?

But here I am heralding a side unconsidered before and as such I decided to share it with all you fine readers. Have a great day, my weekend only has 22.5 hours left.

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March 20, 2023 · 15:44

Brain in overdrive

That happens and It just happened to me, the reason being this tweet. Now, that does not me the given facts are true, but I am willing to go on faith here and the setting becomes a weirdly unsettling one.

So here we see the setting that 4 out of 5 women had a miscarriage. That’s 80% and that number should scare anyone. Is it true? We want to reject it, just like we want to reject “What was in the water” but in all honesty we cannot dismiss either, unless you can prove that the 80% statement is wrong. One untested source gives me “For women who know they’re pregnant, about 10 to 20 in 100 pregnancies (10 to 20 percent) end in miscarriage. Most miscarriages – 8 out of 10 (80 percent) – happen in the first trimester before the 12th week of pregnancy”, this is for the USA. Not sure what other nations are and there is no telling how bad it gets, but the statement is there. To take a little trip in my memory lane, I have known hundreds of women and I am aware of only 3 cases. This does not mean that there were only three, I reckon that most women will not talk about things like that other than to another woman and I get that. But from less than 2% to 80% is a jump and that gives validity to “What was in the water?” You see when these numbers add up to 80% something is driving this and the water is an option. We only need to look back to the Erin Brockovich story to see that things end up in the water and that was BEFORE Shale gas drilling became a fact. Now? I have no way of telling, but in the US big business tends to make policy, not the actual policy makers. 

The second statistic comes into play now. I cannot tell if that number is normal, but it wasn’t and now we see “Most miscarriages – 8 out of 10 (80 percent) – happen in the first trimester before the 12th week of pregnancy” this does not seem natural, something drives this and water makes sense, but the environment is a lot bigger than water and as I understand it pregnancy is a setting of checks and balances and the balances is where it is at. So what is causing that level of imbalance? I do not know but the data puzzler in me is going into overdrive. In this age of overpopulation I shouldn’t be, but consider that the next two generations are lost to us, what will we be left with? If 35% is entering the ‘old fart’ stage, and we lost the bulk of 2 generations. This implies that our population will dwindle down to a little over 5 billion before 2070, not a bad setting as the planet could use a breather, but what we neglect is that any environmental impact on us could remain for the next 5 generations, and in this who remains? That is a much larger question and a much larger issue to deal with. So is this over-hyped? Perhaps, but can we afford to ignore this setting? I don’t think so. This planet needs relief and I am not willing to set it up a species that has destroyed its own balance to procreate. I do not have any answers and any answer I uncover only needs to more questions. For one, the ‘official’ number is debatable, but there is nothing countering it. One answer was “Most pregnancy losses are due to factors that the person cannot control”, I understand the answer, I merely refuse to accept it. The environment (and the water) is something we do not control, but someone is allowing it to contain toxins. I also see that several ‘official’ sources have EXACTLY the same text, so there is a common source there. Yet In Australia I saw “One study that tracked women’s hormone levels daily to detect very early pregnancy determined a miscarriage rate of 31 per cent.” 31% is a long way of 80% and that should have led to a lot more questions, but I do not see them, do you?

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August 31, 2022 · 01:33

It is more than a pool full

I got a nice surprise this morning from the BBC. They had an interesting article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62717599), in this article named ‘Undeclared pools in France uncovered by AI technology’ we see an article on something different. It is not a pool on which girl has the loveliest lingerie. No it is a large tub of water. In Franco they however have the rule that “Pools can lead to higher property taxes because they boost property value, and must be declared under French law.” And as such we get to “The software, developed by Google and French consulting firm Capgemini, spotted the pools on aerial images of nine French regions during a trial in October 2021.” This led to finding well over 20,000 undeclared swimming pools with the number leading to “some €10m (£8.5m) in revenue, French media is reporting” As far as I can tell it is the first time a revenue service got to be clever about the tools available in this. A novel and lovely way to find something. This is a case of deeper learning taking a dive into the photo’s that aids the tax office. To be honest, I never knew swimming pols had to be declared and as such there is the added fact that I never lived in France. And as we are given “According to Le Parisien newspaper, an average pool of 30 sq m (322 sq ft) is taxed at €200 (£170) a year.” If that is true, the finding of 20,000 undeclared pools will add to the French coffers in a nice way. So it sucks to be the non declaring swimming pool owner. But that is not the real deal. It is about something more and we get that when we see “His comments come as France tackles its worst recorded drought that has left more than 100 municipalities short of drinking water. In July, France had just 9.7mm (0.38in) of rain, making it the driest month since March 1961, the national weather service Meteo-France said. Irrigation has been banned in much of the north-west and south-east of France to conserve water.” And still some see global warming as a nuisance, something that is not real. Last week I saw an image of the largest sweet water lake in China, now completely dry, now we see images like the image below. 

I have nothing against people with a pool and for the most people are not hindered by drought, not in Europe, but the fact that France now has the driest month since March 1961, before I was even born gives a much larger stage, one that we cannot deny. It is not about the pools, it is about water and we need to figure out how we can unite all the data on water and find a common factor. I know, it will be people. But consider that the Seine took care of a few hundred in 800AD, and went from 1960 with 46.62 m to 2021 with 67.50 m people. This is a growth of 44.8% in 61 years, now they do not all spot by the Seine, but it gives a rather large stage when we consider that In 1600, there were roughly 220,000 Parisians; in 1650, approximately 450,000 in 1700, Paris had about 550,000 inhabitants. Now Paris is a city that houses 2.161 million, that shows a growth of 390%, now we have a different picture. And here deeper learning might give organisations a better view and we need to do this, not next week or next year. We need to start looking at the facts now, something needs to be done now. And it has nothing to do with pools, that is merely taxation fun for some. The question becomes have we hit a larger point in our evolution? How long until we have drunk all the non salt water? You think I am kidding, but we need to consider that the population of this planet was 2 billion in 1900, in 122 years time we went to 8 billion. 8,000,000,000 people needing 400% more than the population in 1900. I am not kidding, we might have hit a point of no return in the population. The planet can no longer support this population. Consider that we need 16 billion – 24 billion litres of water EVERY DAY to support this population. And that is before we look at what they need for the washing machine, the shower and so on. I am not putting the pools on that list, but someone will and now the need for deeper learning towards water, water consumption and water levels becomes a little more clear, does it not? This planet had a water cycle, it was a natural order, but we disrupted it and we pretty much destroyed it. Water does not get replenished, it merely recycles in different ways, but 8 billion people consume water too making the cycle smaller every day and soon there will be no water. I do at least have an escape plan that allows me to live out my life without the danger of running out of water, but it would help if Amazon or Google (or Elon Musk) buys my IP, sooner rather than later mind you. So when you consider the issues in Pakistan (see below), consider that nature has a massively strange way to seek balance, but is it really balance, or is it something else, something we did by keeping silent to appease the greed driven?

It is a serious question and most governments were part of this all, so they do not get to lecture, but deeper learning could give us numbers on the global aftermath of water shortages and we need to start now, not tomorrow. Data collection needs to start the moment we can, not when it suits some. That time has passed and is gone forever.

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September 3, 2021 · 12:48

When one and one remains one

Two things crossed my path, as perhaps a lot of you too. They are not related, but they gave me food for thought. The first are the floods all over NY city. I looked at a lot of YouTube videos and I agree, we have never seen this before, will we see more of that? Time will tell. Yes, it could be due to global warming, but it is not a given. We have tornado’s and we have storms and this one went towards New York. Now, I am not stating that it isn’t due to global warming, but to point the finger from the start is not a good idea. I do believe that global warming is part of the storm surge and as global warming continues there will be more storms. There is no denying that. One can lead to the other, but one is not the definite cause of the other. That setting is here too. So whilst those with a sub-level apartment, they now have a swimming pool. I am not making fun of them, that would be wrong, but it is important to consider that New York has never dealt with this before and it is now August. It will take months to dry, so we are in a setting with thousands of a basement apartments and when the frost sets in, these houses will become death traps. November and December will be close to unbearable and in January if the frost sets in these apartments will be a different setting. It is also a more important setting, if snowfall comes early this December, thousands of places to live will become close to unsurvivable and New York better get ready for that stage, it could kill a lot of people. Is it a given? No, it is not, but the floods are clearly visible, if the subway is flooded, how will these houses fare? And that is only the start, the water brought all kinds of mud and other health threats, so cleaning these places will be an almost titanic task. Then we get to the damaged electrical systems, and all this is before we realise that plumbing and  water will take a while to become decently reliable again. A stage we saw in part, but how much of these dangers did the people see?

The second is not related, but it had my attention. Reuters (at https://www.reuters.com/article/amazon-tv-usa/amazon-to-roll-out-its-own-tv-in-u-s-by-october-business-insider-idUSKBN2FZ00D) gives us ‘Amazon to roll out its own TV in U.S. by October’, this implies that there is another statin on US minds, Amazon will have more than Amazon Prime Video, they are now setting the stage to TV and there is no attack, there is no issue. Yet the stage of them offering  TV with a twist is not out of the question. It is a clever move from Amazon, they have the option to take advertising to a whole new level and it is THEIR TV channel, so the essential attacks on Amazon will not be as effective as the attacks that Apple and Google are facing. But is that what it is about? No, it is not merely the TV part, it is the shifting economy that Amazon gets to push for. This is not meant in a negative way, but consider that thousands will be dislodged, thousands will need a job, a home and Amazon who is out to hire 55,000 tech jobs and that news is a mere 22 hours old. People have relocated for a lot less and that gives Amazon more than a leg up, it gives them a furlong head start in 2-3 venues and in this setting of bad news they become a shining light and optionally a larger staged beneficial noise to a lot of people. The part that New York might not like is that there is a setting where (depending on Amazon choices) 20-30 thousand people vacate for sunnier shores and in light of what happened in the last few days, with the added workforce taking a step in an optional other direction. We will see a larger stage of the economy changing in New York, one New York never anticipated before. So we see the tech jobs, TV and a lot more and Amazon is at the heart of that. These events are not connected, yet the stage of a larger change becomes apparent, or perhaps I need to say ‘speculatively apparent’. because it is speculation from my side. A stage where Amazon gets to promote their jobs, their positions, their TV, their goods at base pries is an advantage that few ever have and thousands are looking for jobs and that advantage is likely to increase over time. I am merely looking at the pharmaceutical side, the retail side and the job side and there we see Amazon having an advantage thrice over. And as I see it, they are not doing anything wrong. They merely take a versatile set in a post covid era and they are decently ahead of the rest. 

So consider what I write, consider what you think and see where you can prosper, because someone who hires 55,000 tech jobs has a larger plan in place and that is not something you should ignore, especially when Amazon takes that setting on an international level. It gives them a larger advantage over several players who aren’t even close to doing what Amazon is claiming to start over the next 4 weeks.

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July 22, 2014 · 11:55

8 Generations

I thought long about this and until this morning I had not made up my mind whether I would write this. You see, this is not based on facts (or at least extreme loosely facts), I had spoken to a priest about this, but as I see the article in the Guardian (at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/21/five-biggest-threats-human-existence), I decided to write the story anyway.

Consider the notion, the one that Anders Sandberg wrote in his story “Not those who will live 200 years from now, but 1,000 or 10,000 years from now“. In my view the man might actually be an optimist. For the most we have been deceived so long (not by the fore mentioned writer), that we have not been heeding anyone’s word in matters of survivability.

What if we are ending the option of life the way we currently are? What if we have at the maximum only 8 generations left? Did you consider this? Why 8 generations? Well, the number is slightly random, we might actually only have 7 or even 6 generations left.

This train of thought started with two events. The second one is the one I wrote about in ‘Tusks!’ earlier this month. It was about the Ivory trade and how at this stage, elephants will be extinct in 15 years (a claim by the World Wildlife Federation). The first one was the news by several sources that Japan was intend on slaughtering whales again for ‘scientific’ purposes (at http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/experts-concerned-japans-talk-scientific-whaling-n156766). The interesting quote is “What bothers Clapham is that ‘whaling nations have said forever that they advocate sustainable whaling, and then they go on to ignore mounting evidence of population declines in the interests of profit’“. I must say that the IWC has not been overly outspoken in visibility of the numbers, some they have, some are estimates and it can all be found here: http://iwc.int/estimate. The numbers imply that between the two markers 1985-1991 and 1992-2003, the Minke Whales in the southern Hemisphere were ‘culled’ for almost 30%. That is a MASSIVE number! So far Japan has not produced ANY viable information on why whales have to die for their ‘research’. In my view, Japan has an obligation to openly produce the entire scientific data on the whales, with the spectrum of issues they want to prove/disprove by slaughtering whales. If they do not, it is only fair that we perform medical experimentations on the Japanese population in regards to resistance to radiation for the term 1944-1947 and 2010-2014. Will they wait until 30% of the population is ‘culled’ until they complain? I do reckon that national interest in Whale meat would likely go down.

Let us all remain calm and realise that this is not some anti-Japanese issue! But, the example is here for a reason!

The whale has a massive impact on the aquatic balance “When one species of animal that is important to the food chain dies it allows other species to thrive” (from whalefacts.org). In addition there is the quote “Studies have shown that the nutrients in sperm whale poop helps stimulate the growth of phytoplankton which pull carbon from the atmosphere to provide a cleaner and healthier breathing environment for all animals. Estimates state that as much as 400,000 tonnes of carbon are extracted from the air due to these whales each year!“, the whales also keep the krill population in balance, who in term deal with some of the carbon issues we create. Here is where it all becomes a bit weird. It seems that we, Homo Sapiens need Krill oil too. We have been taking massive amounts of it from the arctic and as such, we have denied the whales their food source. Another part is the quote “The adult Antarctic krill feeds preferentially on phytoplankton” implying that the whales themselves foster and nurture their own food source, making it a symbiotic relationship. “Several threats to Antarctic krill have been identified, including increasing commercial demand for krill oil and meal for the aquaculture, medical and cosmetic industries, as well as advancing technologies which enable much greater catches and quicker processing” show that we need the krill food source too, making the whale a competitor, as such, in conjunction with global warming (which removes the chances of successful Krill reproduction), should give us a larger pause then it is currently giving us.

All this has further consequences, as these two species are culled stronger and stronger, the predators in the arctic will end up with different needs. Like the whale, the Elephant has a similar impact. As the Lions and subsequent the Hyena’s lose this food source, they will have to pick on other sources. Consider that an elephant carcass will feed the pride for a week, taking them out means that they become solely dependent on the other species, which will then take a downturn in numbers too. How is all this linked to these 8 generations?

We have been feeding ourselves and through this our biosphere into extinction. The time we could have had to resolve issues are slowly and surely getting lost to us due to sheer greed! You do not have to believe me, but when was the last time you have beef without the fear of horse meat? Is it about profit (partially accepted as correct), or is this because veal is getting harder and harder to get? We see part of this at http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/23/us-usa-agriculture-inflation-idUSBREA4M0FI20140523, where it is stated that prices in the US are at a record high. They blame the drought, which might be true in part. Another side here is the fact that this planets population grew by 30% in the last 20 years, that is within two generations. This is the need to feed over one and a half billion more people. The US only grew by 22% in that time, but consider the given truth that you need greens and livestock to feed another 60 million and add obesity into the mix and you have the beginning of a food disaster.

It goes beyond food, which is the main event, but not the whole picture. The site IndexMundi is telling us, that the world requires 90 million barrels of oil EACH DAY! This number becomes an issue, when we know that the bulk of all oil comes from OPEC and the OPEC-12 reported in that same time a production of 31 million barrels a day. The entire world produces roughly 80 million barrels of oil a day, there seems to be the issue that we need more. Before you go into the idea that it is just oil, and like running water we have plenty. Think again, oil is begotten (for the lack of a better word), from the earth. These fields are finite plain and simple! If we take the following premise that over the last 12 years, we used on average 80 million barrels of oil a day and a barrel in 159 litres, then how much oil did we need to spawn? that number comes to 12.72 billion litres of oil each day for 4380 days, which gets us to a cube that is 59 Km by 59Km by 59Km. That is one massive cube and this is only for the last 12 years. If we accept that the atmosphere end (roughly) at 17Km, then we get an interesting rectangular cuboid which is just over 109 Kilometres long and wide reaching to the edge of our atmosphere (at twice the height of the Mount Everest). I think the picture is clearly shaping that we are seriously on route of consuming ourselves quite literally into extinction. That view is only enhanced when we see the extreme ways on how large companies are now trying to get a little more gas using shale gas methods of getting a little more out of rock. Do you think they would go this distance and setting themselves up to these dangers if it was not ‘essential’? The question becomes, is it greed, or is it finality that is getting us into these waters?

I do not claim to have the answers, but there is every indication that 8 generations might be optimistic. Yes, we see the words on ‘responsible’ fishing and on the need for other solutions. It was only last July when we saw on ABC the quote “Australia’s east coast is experiencing a chronic shortage of wheat and stocks could run out by November“. No matter what this precise reason is for that one newscast, we are confronted that a larger part of the 7 billion population (a 2012 number) needs bread on a daily basis. How much wheat is needed to make 7 billion buns of bread each day?

It is when we realise these astronomical numbers that we get a first inkling on the dangers we face when we hear the words ‘food’ and ‘shortage’ together. More important, what can we do to prevent the nightmare the eight generation will face once he/she arrives there. I am not the first one to make these claims and in many places, we see some ‘expert’ giving us numbers that it will not be such a harsh reality. Is that so? For decades global warming was ‘debunked’ by carefully selected ‘experts’ even today they are still trying to throw sand in many eyes to dissuade many from seeing the perilous times that lie ahead.

In this article I only raised two of the daily needs we face every day, what happens when we add the need for clean (healthy) water? Part of that was illustrated last February in the Guardian (at http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/09/global-water-shortages-threat-terror-war).

The six areas in direct threat give us an indication that drought or not, we are in long term dire need for the one substance we cannot do without. If the human body needs 3 litres of water each day, then how will we get by on getting 21 billion litres of water each day for years to come? We all think too easy that this planet is 70% water. That water is not all fresh water and we have to share it with many other life forms (not just the fish). Feel free not to take my word on this. The WWF had this to say “By 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population may face water shortages”, that is just a decade from now, will this come to pass? Consider that the current population requires a body of water the size of the Dead Sea is not entirely comfortable when we consider the amounts of fresh water we have been polluting in recent years.

Time will tell, in the end we might not even get 8 generations to figure it out, however I always was an incurable optimist.

 

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May 19, 2013 · 12:02

Parenting by the pool

The first line I heard in a newscast was upsetting to me. They were the words “Why were there no life guards?” I understand the agony they have, I know that people want to blame someone, and from the facts I heard on Sky News it is without question that the hotel had made some whopping mistakes. quite likely emergency services failed too. I state likely, for the very reason that many places outside Western Europe do not even have anything close to emergency services as most of us know it. For example, in Sydney, where ambulance services are outstanding, moving slightly out of the area, one would go from almost immediate services to services that need 20-40 minutes to get to you. That is a simple and uncomfortable reality!

Australia has had its deep tragic moments of pool accidents with a tragic outcome more than once. When a child under 10 goes into the water you as a parent NEVER EVER leave it alone. Stay with your child until the child becomes a teen. Even if there is a life guard, the simple reason is that if another child calls the life guards attention to act, your child becomes a target for imminent danger. The life guard is there to aid YOU! The life guard should be trained in first aid, he should know resuscitation if needed (we always hope that this is never needed).

I deeply feel for that family and their loss, I would not never ever want to wish this on my worst enemy. My strong words are meant for YOU, all readers with a child under 10, ready to go to a warm place, to enjoy the Greek sun, the Spanish waves or the Italian waters. Water is the foe nature gives you. It is an unrelenting brutal mistress that shows no mercy and gives no quart.

Whenever you take the word of any hotel that there are life guards (and they should be there at all times), do not assume that this gives you time to breath. Always keep one eye of your child, two eyes if possible. The water excites them, it brings joy and they will not realise the dangers water brings. The moment they do, it might likely already be too late to do something about it.

Be safe this summer, both you and your children!

 

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