The others

Is it just me, or is the world starting to shudder and falter and ... and ... well, who knows?

We tut and sigh when waters wash over the poorer, and lives are squandered in overcrowded cities when the earth has a tantrum. Some of us might even think that it's for the best. How can they be happy without a latte or 42" screen?

We dip into our wallets reverently, but not usually at the expense of our lifestyle or at the thought of necessarily improving somebody else's. It is often more to do with the salvation of our conscience than that of the less well-heeled masses.

What of the cosy environment we have created for ourselves? The temperature is right, adjustable. We can manage well in our cosified human nests. The fridge is full, and food and water is plentiful in the households we know. We can watch in comfort, as the Third World falls into our living room, ravaged faces and skeletal bodies. It can be turned off.

Interesting, poverty from suburbs much closer to home can hardly be seen through the curtain of well-heeled suburbandom - it's too hard to see through the smug. Opportunites galore in Godzone, opportunities for the taking, pick them off the opportunity tree - Opportunitree. All very well, but what if you can't even get to the ladder to reach the branches? 

But when the shaking happens in our own neighbourhood, when the earth's tantrums threaten to topple and turnover our own lives, then what? What makes us 'first worlders' more significant than the 'third worlders'?

Does the beggar love his children less than the banker who never sees his?

Just a meander, must be Sunday afternoon. Might go and check out how much goats costs.

Whiffy waftings

Loos and poos, for some of us, are as fascinating now as they were when we were two. Don't ask me why, I have no idea (well I do have one or two theories but I'd rather not elucidate these here). I am one of the 'fascinatees'.

You know how it goes when potty training your little sprogetts. You encourage and 'coo' and 'ooo' over the little potty sausages - this turns my stomach just thinking about it now. The first splash in the big loo, of a digestive missile from the little legged ones, is received with much raptuous fervour, especially in middle-class, over-indulged households.

I remember when once my oldest son was perched on the loo, legs swinging; as the early days of loo usage are usually quite fun. After a while, there was a little plip-plop-plip. "My poo is like rain." A pause for thought. "My bottom is a cloud." Not only toilet trained but a poet as well - my genes, obviously. If only there had been Facebook at the time.

At work, the ladies loos are pinned with all sorts of paraphenalia suggesting that there is a particular way to flush the loo, and it is explained as the 'superior flush'. Perhaps it should be called the superior flush for the Royal wee. There's even a little diagram showing how to pop a new toilet roll in, who'd have ever thought. So there's expected etiquette in the office loos which is quite delightful at first, but it also highlights the sad fact that there are a few who haven't mastered the superior flush. 

The other day, it became necessary to flush a loo in an apartment on the 22nd floor of a city tower block. Upon flushing said loo I heard the crashing and clanging as the flush hurtled down goodness knows how many kilometres of pipes to reach the ground floor. If you start doing the maths in your head, it's quite perplexing, especially for the mathematical numbskull. How many such towering blocks are there in the city? Best not to think of such things.

Anyway, the other day a fire alarm sent us scuttling out of our office block, we noticed a whiffy waft, coming from the drains. It was quite potent and drove some of us to seek a nose cover with whatever was at hand. I had the fortune to be wearing a scarf.

Auckland was particularly whiffy on that crispy autumn afternoon. And I couldn't help but wonder if the pipes below us are coping as our beautiful city grows.

Hope so.