Water not finite

AA Gill, the restaurant critic of the Sunday Times (London), has written an excellent review making what should be an obvious point – but sadly is not – that water is the ultimate recylable commodity (9 March):

“All the water that ever was, every ice-age glacier, every princess’s tear, every rill, gill, brook, beck and burn, each and every drop of monsoon, all scattered showers, every old man’s prostate dribble and teenager’s salivay snog is still here. The world is as soggy as the Garden of Eden.

“Water is not a finite resource; it isn’t a vanishing commodity; if you leave the tap running, it doesn’t vanish for ever. Don’t let anybody tell you that you’re wasting it: you can’t. You may be wasting the energy that brought it to you, but you’re not clever enough or powerful enough to vanish. Water is constantly on the move. It flies in the night in the howling storm, burrows through the minutest crease in the impregnable rock, rests behind the skirting board, meditates brightly on dawn spiders’ webs. The cupidity and caprice of water is one of the central themes of mankind’s saga. We have to go with the flow.”