This one’s a contender for pseud’s corner.
Well, in an orally fixated culture, you’ve got to have something to stick in your gob, and I suspect that the appeal of a small bottle of water is that it is not a Mars Bar, not a cigarette, not a glass of wine. “Look,” the water carrier proclaims, “I am not drinking alcohol!” (at least, not right now). The water bottle is a priggish symbol of purity and piety, and in so far as this is radiated externally, it is a reproof to the person daring to drink wine in the holy presence of the water-drinker. In so far as it is not radiated, then the water-drinker is claiming brownie points for being conscious of their own wellbeing… as if anybody cares what they’re doing to their body. It’s true, by the way, that drinking bottled water is unlikely to cause you any harm, although you can overdo it and people have died from excessive consumption. (You drown, basically, and so if you notice your life beginning to flash before you after that 12th bottle of Perrier… stop!)
It’s just a bottle of water. If you don’t want to drink a bottle of water, then don’t. If you think it’s too expensive then don’t buy it. Mostly, I don’t, but I don’t get my knickers in a knot because others do.
That said, one of the delights of trekking on a motorcycle across the Spanish plain is the cold water bottle dispensers at service stations – cold water goes down a treat in 30o plus of heat. Nothing else quite touches the spot.
Must admit, the trend for fat arsed cows in jogging hoses, pushing prams which make a bloody Humvee look like a “Barbie pedal car”*, rat tail hair with enough grease to fill the forks on the complete Bundeswehr motorcycle pool, a mobile glued to one ear, and a bottle of water shoved in the gob, does rather peeve.
I mean, how many fat arsed cows died of thirst on the way to the bloody bookies and white lightning cider shop BEFORE bottled water was fashionable?
*(You can tell the classy ones, the prams have all their wheels.)
Tea is diuretic. It also tends to make you sweat. Fine if you fancy a little something, like drinking tea or want to rejoice in your Englishness, but not a lot of good if you’ve been sweating like a pig for hours in the hot sun.
I live in the South of Spain and, as you clearly know, it’s bloody hot. Not good cricket weather hot, or ice-cream on the beach hot, but ‘try walking, riding, running, working, standing around in it for a few hours on nothing but a cup of tea and you will be ill’ hot. ‘Hide indoors if you can between 11 and 7’ hot. You need water. It doesn’t have to be bottled, of course, but it helps if it’s cold.
Who are these ridiculously petty types who have to complain about every single, tiny little thing that they don’t understand or agree with? If he wants to drink tea, can’t he just drink tea and shut up?
/rant
But he is not talking about Spain. He is talking about Britain. In which case….
Makes no difference. No one is making him buy bottled water. If others want to, that’s their business.
Agreed. Does not stop one wishing to kick them in the teeth for being such pratts though.
Same with people with off road panzered bloody battleships on wheels, to take their fat wee bastards twenty meters to school. 😀
Bring it on. I can’t wait until I am discouraged from drinking water around children. I look forward to a time when everyone is shoehorned into a small box that the authorities consider to be appropriate.
After all, it increases the chances of someone going completely batshit – makes for interesting headlines. 😉
I know he’s talking about Britain, in which case the people he mentions (and the ones you mention) are not in danger of dehydration, and if they were there’s nothing wrong with tap water, but they’re drinking Evian or whatever because, hey, they feel like it. I don’t understand why he thinks it matters.
He also has a go at some chap (class of chaps) for daring to have the courtesy to ask if he needs anything, which is not just petty, it’s crass and rather stupid. And, as I’m sure he is perfectly well aware, when speaking in public it is often helpful to be able to moisten the lips or the throat from time to time.
He’s a novelist, apparently, yet he pontificates on the effect of water on the human body without bothering to link to any expert opinion or study, only attributing one, largely irrelevant, reamark to someone who appears to be a quack.
Oh, and “I drink tea – at least half a dozen cups a day, preferably malty Assam (that’s English Breakfast to you)”. Well that’s us ignorant plebs told, isn’t it?
I’d never heard of this man before, but I’ve taken an intense dislike to him after 30 seconds of skimming his article.
Ah wait: Andrew Martin’s latest novel is ‘The Baghdad Railway Club’ (Faber)
All is explained.
That was my reaction, closely followed by “pompous, pretentious, snobbish twat”.
I happen to be a pretentious, snobbish twat, and I resent being placed in the same category as Andrew Martin of the Independent, whose mother had the misfortune of the obstetrician seemingly retaining the afterbirth during her labour, thus giving us the talented writer we enjoy today.
Of course, if you read the Indie, you’re already spanking, so 400 words of Andrew Martin spilling his seed won’t bother you in the slightest. In fact, it’s probably the second biggest sperm bank in the world. The Guardian wins hands down, though. I like to sneer at the pillowbiters who read it. None of them has the anxiety of a real worker. Look at the fingers of a Guardian reader – no scars or blemishes, they look like babies’ cocks.
Back to Andrew, though. He strikes me as the sort of person who smells the lint from his navel, and I, for one, look forward to his hard-hitting article on this fascinating subject, if his bogey-tasting doesn’t take precedence.
“The English only drink water as a penance”
Dominic Mancini, ambassador of Milan to the court of Edward IV …
the start of the habit of carrying a bottle of water coincided with the need to drink plenty of it when using ‘e’ in clubs….hence the water bottle was a badge that declared ‘look at me, I’m cool, I do drugs’….. it expanded later to ‘look at me, I jog and need water’….and then ‘look at me, I’m too precious to drink tap water,…..finally to ‘I’m a twat who does what everyone in my peer group of twats does’.
Which is as good a reason as any to kick them in the fanny/bollox.
And is EVERY one recieving notification of an answer in Spanish, or is it just me? Or is that part of the deal for letting them off with billions of debt?
By an serendipitous concatenation of circumstances – this “Counterblast against hydration mythology” arrived at my ‘InBox’ within an hour of the exquisitely crafted ‘We’re All-Doooomed’ item on bottled water in Waily-Fail-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2157423/Poisoned-plastic-Chemicals-water-bottles-food-packaging-linked-infertility-birth-defects-Scaremongering-truth.html
[I strongly recommend reading- DHMO.org – while sipping a bottle of Coca-Cola’s “Dasani” branded tap water]