Fourteen days, ten flights, five hotels, four hire cars...
There is only so much CNN news that anybody should be made to watch and I have now reached saturation. Three trips to Athens, plus a visit to Kos, Crete and Corfu and finally Gran Canaria have left me permanently brain damaged by the only English speaking channel available out there.
I was out there working for one of the better holiday companies and inspecting some new and refurbished aquatic facilities (what we use to call swimming pools).
I was brought up to believe 'British is Best' and I still subscribe to this philosophy. Due to this, I tend to think we will be light years in front of others in the pool industry, oops sorry aquatic facilities industry. But in fact I saw some great installations, good sized filtration systems with transparent non-return valves. I'm sure that many of you are already fitting these but I've yet to see them.
Unbelievably, the poolies whom I encountered were still using the basic pool testers where you add tablets to the pool water in the tester and shake. Anyway I showed Spiros my photometer and he went wild for one. Speaking through Georgio, the bar manager cum interpreter, he offered me various things in exchange for it. Starting off with a barrel of olives, progressing to a free week at the resort and his final offer was his daughter, who you will all get to meet at the next SPATEX dinner (only joking!). Anyway Colin Day, get yourself out there and sell some quality test kits and, if you so wish, bring Spiros's daughter to the SPATEX dinner.
With only one day left, the company I was working for contacted me and asked me to ‘pop’ over to work in Gran Canaria for a few days.
After two weeks, I started to run short of clean underwear and socks and thought I would do some hand-washing, This was relatively new for me and I ploughed through cartons of what may have been absolutely anything from Calcium Hypochlorite to self-raising flour. Fortunately Bob Kent came to my rescue, not that he was there of course, but scanning the ingredients I spotted that one contained 30% zeolite. Fortunately I had listened to a Bob Kent lecture when he had mentioned Zeolite’s ability to remove ammonia and was used in many washing powders.
Anyway, I finally got home. Yeah, just in time to spend my 69th birthday with my family, receiving numerous pairs of socks and pants. The next day, my wife and I drove down to Spain. Two days solid driving approximately equal to the time I spent alone in numerous air terminals in the previous weeks.
Anyway I’m back out there in the Autumn delivering an ISPE endorsed PPO, just as soon as I finish in Doha.
*Allen Wilson is a consultant at Studies In Work Pool & Spa H&S. First released in 2009, Wilson's Essential Pool & Spa Plant Handbook provides indispensable reading.
