Water Fools

I’ve racked up some miles again this week and the insufferable 6 hour plus lift I was gifted between Cardiff and Newcastle in no way reflected the childlike exuberance of fellow traveller Billy Connolly as he laughed heartily through his Journey to the Edge of the World (last night’s TV). Really, they should make that man available on the NHS. Joyful! Chin chin, Big Yin!

The previous week’s journey commenced with a heart warming sight in sub-zero conditions. Hitting the North by means of the A14, I encountered a stretch of highway that had clearly held prisoner motorists in the recent unexpectedly high snowfall. For there colonising the central reservation were families of snowfolk of all shapes, sizes and activities – and in some places mud and surface colouration even led to a variety of race.

If I was in charge of the media this would have been the lead story all day long, but I had to make do with the scene playing out in my mind, a wintry version of REM’s Everybody Hurts video, with motorists vacating their steely tombs en masse to revel in the snow and create this joyous community of powdery people. Why So Serious? Salutes you, playful, gentle folk.

Another prime example of what & who this blog is all about (‘so far’, but more of that in a minute) featured on a drive time national radio station (under the omnipresent ‘V’ brand – you know it) where listeners are encouraged to phone in with their slightly eccentric quirks; things that instantly cheer them up/ get them through the day (akin to my ‘List’ blog Trains, Planes & Agutter).

The example that had me clapping with delight on the interminable road hike from Stockport to Cardiff this week, was a lady that swans around her house wearing imaginary flippers of different colours. The image that this conjures is fantastic in itself, but that she includes the detail of different colour flippers, these are the things that soul mates are made of!

I’m going to try it, I bet it feels utterly wonderful.

I pay homage to these lovely souls as they are truly exuding the spirit of what I’d like to breed here. Just hearing and seeing such triumphs over the daily grind enriches my life. We need more just like them.

Which is kind of the point of my blah-ging here. We need an army of like-minded folk to take the baton and run screaming like loons over the mental constraints of the Matrix. And once we swell in numbers, we’ll set to thinking about some real positive action we can all spur (Random Acts of Kindness are coming up – come on, you were expecting that…)

To this end I’ve been looking to gift you with some new brothers and sisters. I’ve had postcards printed to spread the word and am currently strategically placing these in discreet areas that I think kindred spirits will haunt. Welcome aboard if you’re one of the random. Thanks for making the leap.

Because whilst the frivolous and the downright bloody silly is food for the soul, from time to time I will set aside my raison d’etre – and just for a moment – get serious… (sorry!)

For the power for change is within us all.

In my day job, I bounce around the UK supporting the application of certain software (zzz), banging on in my own words to ensure it’s used as ‘a force for Good – and not Evil’. Which is also – without the slightest subterfuge – what Why So Serious is about.

Consider this. Ribbed as I was for happening upon such a TV travesty in the first place, travel weary and confined to room serviced barracks earlier this week, I found my dulled senses entertained by ‘Celebrity’ Family Fortunes. One of the posers feeding the ‘Survey Says!’ rankings was; ‘Name something you drink out of a bottle’…

Got one?... Ashamed as I am to admit it, without hesitation I snapped “wine!” My thinking was that the substance whilst presented in a bottle, is extracted into a more socially acceptable receptacle prior to consumption. I wasn’t entirely envisaging drinking from the bottle…

Anyway, the top answer?... Water.

Fortunate as we are in Western civilisation (with the exception of the more ‘backward’ regions of Europe) – it wasn’t all that long ago that purchasing water in cancerous plastic bottles was the folly of madfolk. Why pay for something that comes free and plentiful from the tap or ‘faucet’? How long until we start paying a premium for air? (the same chum who mocked my televisual proclivities that very eve, swears blind that she saw a news report where some poor citizens in the world are already coughing up to avoid coughing up – though I maintain she was drunk and unwittingly watching Total Recall at the time…)

Now my beef isn’t around all the romantic BS wrapped around pure springs ideals in a screw cap (seriously – if you’ve ever followed the course of a real mountain stream, you’d certainly expect a sheep’s poop float with your H2O at the very least) – more so the evil scumbags profiteering in its proliferation.

Drum roll for our Survey Says top offenders – Coca Cola and the ‘number one bottled water company worldwide’ - Nestle.

For you have to be a clued up consumer or a lover of tiny tiny text to often realise that Buxton, Vittel, Perrier, Pellegrino, Malvern and many many regional variations (most of us are at least aware of Coke’s Desani debacle) are the product of ‘those who cast no shadow’.

The corporate atrocities perpetrated by each of these evil empire’s, knowingly or by supposed ignorance of sinning through franchised association, number in their ranks: child labour, extortion, bribery, death threats to union members and their families, criminal oversights in health & safety practices and without a tinge of irony - local damming and poisoning of local water supplies with the expulsion of waste by-products.

Nestle are of course world denounced for past marketing their formula milk in developing countries by way of bullying and scare mongering of mothers, leading them to believe that their essential and life preserving breast milk is far inferior to Nestle’s mass produced alternative. Ker-ching!

I used to be a mid-high consumer of Coke products. Then there came a day that with the benefit of knowledge and the realisation that my lipsmackingthirstquenching tipple of choice hardly need bear the allergy warning: ‘may contain water’. So I decided to do the decent thing. Which is hard, for just as Coke & Nestle have cornered the fizzy pop, confectionery and soul-sapping-scumbag markets, it’s really difficult to buy water bottled by ethical companies.

My own solution to the problem is that the bottle(s) I have most constant at my side, are recycled receptacles containing nothing but the produce freely flowing forth from my faucet. Take that - corporate greed!

I’m also planning to start up my stand-up again and take this message on the road (more travel! – deep joy!) and am currently scrawling down ‘ethical’ jokes which I hope don’t come across as preachy.

Of course should you adopt such an ethic of abstinence, it always helps to write/email your target of choice so they don’t misinterpret such market forces as recession and the like as the sole contributor to a blip in their humungous profits. Thus, together as one, this force for Good can start to get noticed.

Oh, and should you commit to all this – please make sure you’re wearing your odd coloured flippers whilst you do so, please.

Fantastic!


Further reading:

Mark Thomas – Belching Out the Devil: Global Adventures With Coca-Cola
Duncan Clark – The Rough Guide To Ethical Living
Fred Pearce – Confessions of an Eco Sinner
Mark Pendergrast – For God, Country and Coca-Cola