Not everyone likes the smell of garlic. But I do. Not on people's breath of course - particularly next day. As driving down from Montgomeryshire to Cardiff tonight, the smell hanging over Brecon created an image in my mind of a late night French barbeque in the garlic season. It must have been the still cold night but the output emanating from the Beacon Foods factory on the outskirts of the town has never smelt stronger. Anyway, it has put the power of smell in my mind - and particularly its power to offput.
I still remember the foul smell when I had to empty all the poultry manure pits when I was a lad on the family farm. I felt sick dealing with the first slurry tanker load, but after a while I became used to it and didn't notice it at all. But everybody else did. The worst of it was that, no matter how much I scrubbed myself, I stank of chicken s*** all night. I was still a virgin til we sold the chickens. If we hadn't given up the poultry, I would probably still be a single man, without any friends.
And then, when I played rugby for Welshpool, in the twilight of my career, our hooker, Steve Pastfield, used to run a commercial pig unit. His fetid ambiance was worth 6 points a game - more if he came straight from the piggery. You could almost see the stink rising from the scrum and we hugely enjoyed the outraged groans of the opposition. Our props were used to it of course. We were nothing like so successful if Steve was on his week off. It never seemed to do him any harm but, surprisingly, he didn't grow very big.
Which brings me to municipal incinerators. Whenever an incinerator is proposed by a waste disposal authority, there is immediate outrage about the anticipated smell. So I went to Vienna to find out, where all the city's rubbish is burned in city centre incinerators, which also provide hot water for all the public housing. I have posted about the amazing Spittilau incinerator before, but there was absolutely no smell at all. The truth is, it smelt rather nicer than Brecon did tonight - and Brecon is one of the nicest places in the world to live.
5 comments:
well Glyn, we know you believe in incineration... but will you back one in Mid Wales, especially if it was really close to home?!
I am not a fan of incineration - but cannot see how more of it can be avoided. It would be great if our committment to reduce, reuse and recycle could solve the problem - but we know it won't be enough, no matter how successful. My point is that we should tackle the issue in a timely way - rather than deal with the issue in a panic when the Landfill was used up.
As it happens, at a personal level, I would much prefer an incinerator on my doorstep to a landfil site!
seriously your an elected member...do you really think people want to know about how long you were a virgin for!
Glyn's sex life or Cardiff Bay politics - which is more lively? A tricky question. The only real solution is to keep logging on to the blog - hopefully we'll have quite a bit of excitement from Glyn on both fronts.
I can only respond to 'anon' by explaining that the content of this blog is varied - and is written by an indivual who is an AM, a keen sportsman, an observer of life, several other things as well - and is sometimes near the edge. I do advise anyone who wants only to read political comment to visit other sites. However I hope they will accept the blog as it is currently written, simply ignoring posts that ar non-political
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