Don't wet the outside

Disasters can happen in the blink of an eye. Afterwards comes the regret: if only you hadn't glanced away for a moment, jumped into the water, climbed so high, driven so fast…

I've had my share of them, but why did I remember this particular one after so many decades? It came to me while watching the workmen laying paving blocks on the newly reformed plaza in town (see the earlier story Shady business). One of them walked over to a palm tree, picked up a litre bottle of water standing next to it, unscrewed the blue plastic top and took a long swig from the neck.

By then the water must have been unpleasantly warm. There's an easy solution to that problem and it doesn't involve plastic bottles. But first, the disaster.

After we'd bought our little house in La Gomera many years ago there was a lot of building work to be done and we turned up daily to solve or forestall any problems. In a different time and place, in England, I narrowly prevented an enthusiastic workman from knocking a large hole in the wall for a door halfway up the staircase. He was looking at the plans upside down.

This particular morning, in Gomera, we were specifying where we wanted the electrical sockets positioned, which is something you will always get wrong but you have to try. Luis the contractor was marking the locations with a red felt-tipped pen. This sounds easy but it wasn't because the rooms were cluttered with bricks, tools, cement sacks, a wheelbarrow, a cement mixer and, in the front room, Isidro, perched on a scaffolding platform to plaster the ceiling. One of his arms was entirely covered with plaster, which made me wonder if his wife used a hammer and chisel to get his shirts clean. He always turned up looking immaculate in the morning.

Anyway, ducking under Isidro's platform we emerged in front of Mongo who was shovelling sand into the churning drum of the mixer. He stepped back politely to let us pass, tripped over a large ceramic jug just behind him and saved himself only by throwing a hand out to the wall. The ceramic jug could do nothing but tumble over and break. It split in two quite neatly around its plump middle.

Isidro and Luis froze, gazing at the water spilling across the concrete floor. Paco hurried in from another room, nodded and observed quietly, 'That's the porrón'.

Mongo stared forlornly at the two halves lying on the floor then toed away the top half. He picked up what was left of the base. 'We can still use this.'

We'll draw a veil over the comments about that idea but it quickly became obvious that the defunct porrón played an essential role in the operation, supplying cool drinking water in a hot climate. Nobody really blamed Mongo, nobody blamed anybody, it was an accident, but of course we felt guilty for being the primary cause.

'We'll get a new one,' we assured them.

'No, no,' Luis protested, waggling a finger, 'it wasn't your fault.' Then after a moment, 'They sell them in the ferretería in town.'

He was referring to the main source of such equipment in those days, an ironmonger's in the centre of town that could supply you with anything from five brass screws to an industrial power drill, along with a paella pan, kitchen weighing scales, stepladder, ornate flower vase or porrón.

There was a row of those along a high shelf in different sizes and a colour choice of terracotta or pale sand. Certain features were common to all: a bulbous shape, a handle at the top, a nozzle with a large hole for filling the vessel and on the opposite side, a spout with a much smaller hole from which you pour a stream of water into your mouth. The spout looks a bit rude but that just adds to the charm. The design of these things must go back centuries. I bet Columbus had a few of them on his ship when it arrived here in 1492.

We chose one similar to the accident victim. Its price was 960 pesetas, around 6 euros, equivalent to over 10 euros nowadays but still a bargain for something that looked almost hand-crafted, beautiful and timeless. 'Don't wet the outside,' the proprietor warned us.

We took it back to the building site that would one day be our house. Effusive greetings and thanks. 'It needs preparing, though,' Luis said. 'Don't wet the outside.'

'Very important not to wet the outside,' Isidro emphasised.

'Fatal,' emphasised Luis, which doesn't actually mean fatal in Spanish but is definitely something to be avoided.

'What you do,' Paco instructed, 'is to fill it with water - inside, don't wet the outside - and add a glass of anís,' by which he probably meant the aniseed liqueur called Chinchón, after the Spanish town where they make it.

'Or rum,' offered Mongo.

Luis shook his head. 'You don't need anís or rum, just water. Fill it, leave it for a day, empty it, fill it again. When the water stops tasting of clay, basta, enough, it's done, the porrón is ready.'

'It's much better if you add a little anís,' Paco objected. 'Sterilises it.' I absolutely love the Spanish propensity for arguing at length about anything at all. After listening for a minute or two I handed Luis the porrón. 'You do it. Please?'

A couple of days later we saw the porrón tucked away safely in a quiet corner of the building, filled with water and cool to the touch como Dios manda as they say in Spain, as God commands, as things should be.

Which brings me to the main point of this story, which is that the porrón is a simple but clever device that not only holds water but also keeps it cool, yet is inexorably disappearing from the building sites. Everyone buys bottled water instead. I can feel a rant coming on here but I'll save it for the notes, below.

Filled with nostalgia, I decided to see if it would still be possible to buy a porrón in San Sebastián. The old ironmonger's is long gone but there is another wonderful shop that supplies catering equipment to the restaurant trade and anyone else who cares to wander in, such as a nostalgic foreigner. To my delight they could offer a porrón - and not just one dusty remnant from the back of a cupboard but a collection of bright new ones prominently displayed on a low shelf, with a choice of sizes in either sand or terracotta colour.

I see hope on that shelf. Hope for a brighter future when more people realise that water in plastic bottles is a wasteful nonsense if a humble ceramic jug will do a better job and last forever.

Yes, yes, don't say it: until someone trips over it…

-------------- NOTES --------------

Surely this is not a porrón but…?

Correct. A ceramic vessel such as this to drink water from is properly called a botijo, while a porrón is a glass vessel with a long, conical spout from which you drink wine.

In Gomera, Tenerife and probably the other Canary Islands the water vessel has come to be called a porrón. Perhaps because the glass porrón would have been uncommon in earlier times - you'd have drunk wine from a wineskin.

How does it work?

The botijo is made from clay and oven fired but not glazed, which means it remains porous. Not so much that all the water drains away, just enough for it to evaporate slowly through the sides, and the evaporation cools the vessel.

Back in the days when milk in the UK was left in bottles on your doorstep, in summer some people would leave a ceramic sleeve for the milkman to slip over each bottle, standing in a bowl of water.

My family also had a little cabinet called an Osokool, made of porous ceramic with a hollow on the top that you kept filled with water. We used it for milk, butter and anything else that might go off in the heat.

Okay, now the rant

I need to talk about water. One of the most extraordinary changes I've witnessed in recent years is that people no longer drink tap water. The water hasn't changed, but people have. A myth has unaccountably grown that tap water here is full of minerals and gives you kidney stones. The truth is that it really isn't 'hard' water, it's relatively soft, and anyway some mineral content is good for the body. People get kidney stones because they don't drink enough of it. It's very common to see an elderly man pop into a bar for a small glass of red wine to quench his thirst.

Along with that myth has grown the general concept that tap water is bad, unclean and smelly, which is also untrue. We keep a jug of it in the fridge and it's absolutely fine. By contrast, water stored in plastic bottles is very likely to absorb noxious chemical additives that leach from the plastic, particularly in a hot climate.

But I'm fighting a lone, losing battle here. Short of some Chernobyl-style catastrophe involving plastic bottles, they're not going to go away. There are now vans that spend every day delivering nothing but bottled water to the supermarkets and cafes.

Anís

To finish on a sweeter note: Chinchón is a very pleasant liqueur, a close cousin of French pastis such as Ricard or Pernod. It comes in sweet or dry varieties but in Gomera I've only seen the sweet one. It's a clear liquid that, like pastis, turns milky white when you add a little ice or water. If you mix it in a ratio of three parts water to one of liqueur it makes a refreshing drink and the ideal vessel from which to swig it is a botijo - or if you're in La Gomera, a porrón - because any water you put in it subsequently will retain a light, refreshing hint of aniseed.