My name is… Elton John
Year: 2012
Photos from Gran Canaria
Some photos from Gran Canaria.
Lovely sun, flowers, walks, parks, dunes and… naked golfers. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to photograph the last one!
Squatting
While on the subject of humanure, it seems most compost toilets utilise the same preference for sitting, rather than squatting, popularised by Thomas Crapper himself. This is unfortunate, as the position is implicated in too many health problems to count. However, there is a movement afoot to circumvent this that doesn’t involvce ripping out your prize ceramic throne and replacing it with one of these (available for £50 on ebay):
Such as:
www.amazon.com/The-Welles-Step-Easier-Defecation/dp/B000Z03SHM
Or, for those who like to make these sorts of thing themselves:
My own construction, based on the lillipad design, is still going strong:
Of course, what we really need is this sort of thing in our back garden (or yard) if we’re lucky enough to have the space:
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I have been unfortunate enough to have a composting toilet located in my hallway – right between my bedroom and living room. After much lobbying the aforementioned pit of cess has been moved to the downstairs hallway. I can report that due to the excellent quality of sawdust used, that only very rarely does my entire house wreak of doo-doo.
Our research has proved that you just need a bucket, a smattering of privacy and a compost which has a lid on it. Adding paper is good but not too much of the yellow wet stuff.-
the yellow stuff is good for watering the plants…
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pinkie Ha ha ha ha ha heeeee heeee heeeee “doo-doo”! Childish I know.
Hosepipe flam
Our water supplier hasn’t enforced a hosepipe ban, having plentiful supplies, but it seems what’s needed nationally is some other initiative that does more to stem the flow. According to these two pie charts, which I came across while buying wood in a timber store, of the 21.7% of water used domestically, only 7% is utilised outside. Assuming hosepipes account for that 7%, it means that if everyone stopped all outside water use, there would be an overall saving of 1.5%. Mmm.
Perhaps the most telling aspect of these pie charts is the extraordinary amount of water used in toilet flushing. Apparently, this works out at 6 flushes a day, per person. Possibly, the water companies might be better employed putting their energy into devising an alternative way of dealing with humanure – in particular, urine – that doesn’t involve using more four times more water than ever finds its way into hosepipes.
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I believe that in the less subtle English parts of the southern hemisphere they have a saying, which goes….ahem; “If it’s brown, flush it down. It’s yellow, let it mellow”. Perhaps we need to adopt the approach of our former penal colonies?
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there is often a “light” flush option with more modern toilets that uses some fraction of the normal amount of water. maybe this or using it to feed the plants is a better option as letting it mellow does tend to smell after a while….
Fairy time
Tights on the head style
also here: picasaweb.google.com/106558941672386465621/GranCanaria
Very nice. Such lovely flowers. What are those weird fruits (photo 4)? And where did you see the OrangUtans? I don’t remember a zoo. Shame you didn’t snap one of those stone shelters.
Some kind of palm tree fruit i guess – not sure if they were edible. We visited Palmitos Park on the last day where there was a rather bored Orangutan…