Water gets fashionable
Humour
It’s a mad, mad world. In fact, here in the UK, it’s a crazy, mixed up world...
But you probably know this already. Water is uncool. Yes, it’s true. You can’t drink mere ‘water’ anymore. It must be volcanic, Alpine (or Himalayan or any number of other mountain ranges) ‘spring water’ that was supposedly provided by some happy smiling peasant living a pure and simple lifestyle, who harnessed it by filling his bucket from a cascading waterfall. His happy smiling wife then bottled it for your pleasure, just before she ventured outside to milk the mountain goats. Well, that’s how the sales pitch goes.
As a child, if I were thirsty, I would head for the tap to fill a glass with water. As I got older, I even remember putting my mouth against a tap in the gym to drink from. Everyone did it. Very unhygienic I know, and health and safety regulations do not allow such a thing today. Mouths against tap probably isn’t a good idea, but the water itself was of perfect quality. Tap water in the UK remains perfectly drinkable to this day.
These days, however, it is way too uncool to be seen to be drinking tap water.
Somewhere along the line, some company thought it would be a great idea to try to sell bottled water to the masses. How ludicrous. Just who on earth would pay for drinking water when it was freely available from the tap. Well, it seems just about most of the population.
A plastic bottle of water that you have, you paid a ridiculous price for these days, you can’t leave home without one! And everyone in the gym carries one. Why fill up a bottle from home up with free tap water when you can buy it from the gym for a stupid price? Of course, the bottle has to have a trendy label. The label will usually state that the water inside fell to earth from snow white clouds hovering over the Andes, was then filtered through some timeless volcanic rock, mingled with the purest of air as it fell down some pristine mountainside and ended up in some famous ancient spring that no one has ever heard of.
According to the label, this product associated with wonderful wilderness and age old processes must be consumed not later than December this year! And people buy into such a thing. Having an exotic French sounding name plastered on the label helps, as does an picture of a stream and snow capped peak. I’ve tasted this water. I’ve tasted tap water too. The difference? one whatsoever!
But it’s all about perception. Drinking water that comes out of a metal tap, or drinking water that comes from a trendy bottle that evokes images of purity and nature? No contest. No contest that is for those with more money than sense, who are driven to buy something they don’t need and didn’t really know they wanted till some marketing company convinced them that they did.
I wonder if in some Alpine village they drink tap water that has been bottled. And I wonder if the label states “Bottled Tap Water from Belgium.” All those simple villagers trying to be urban chic with their bottled tap water from Brussels, and all those city dwellers drinking “Pure Himalayan Mountain Spring Water” trying to give the impression they are at one with nature.
The notion they are not at one with nature, living the pure and simple lifestyle, is given away by the fact that their bottled water has become a mere fashion accessory to accompany the ubiquitous mobile phone, i-pod and any other number of pointless resource depleting gadgets to be carried around.
I don’t want to be trendy. I don’t want to be seen to be carrying around the latest plastic water bottle fashion accessory. Tell you what, I’m off to drink some water from the tap. The very same substance contained in those overpriced bottles on the supermarket shelves that probably also came from a tap before it was bottled on an industrial estate on the outskirts of a some ugly urban sprawl. Enjoy your water. Cheers!
