The absurdity of paying ridiculous prices for bottled water at restaurants and the nonsense of transporting water from all over the world to a Britain awash with rain and a good quality water supply is finally attracting media attention…. I always drink tap water and so far I have not grown breasts nor do I seem to be off my head on a permanent high from oestrogen and cocaine residues in the Thames. Of course, when I am not drinking water, I drink espresso and red wine.
I was having my usual breakfast this morning at 6.45 am when I saw a jogger go by clutching a bottle of Evian water. The outside temperature was just touching zero… and I was reading in the press that it cost ten litres of water to make just one litre of bottled water. I lit a cigarette and reflected on this. It does a make a bit of a nonsense of carbon footprint and offsets to import water from as far away as Fiji or New Zealand.
But then I remembered a press clipping cut from the Daily Mirror yesterday. “Fancy a fag? Get a permit” screamed the headline. Prof Julian Le Grand of The London School of Economics has come up with a plan to get smokers to opt in and be required to fill in an exceptionally complex form to get a permit (and pay £10) to be permitted to smoke. Smokers should be forced to carry a licence to smoke…say health watchdogs. Clearly, Prof Le Grand Buffoon has way too much time on his hands and we have had quite enough from medical watchdogs in recent years as far as I am concerned. Ministers are looking for input ‘from a wide range of views’, apparently. Why not have a “Porker licence’… for the obese?, binge-drinking permits for topers?, talking licences, valid only at middle class dinner parties, for bores who want to drone on about the value of their houses and the future profitability of their tediously overtalented and e-numbered up children? The list is capable of no end.
I lit another cigarette and even contemplated getting a bottle of Rioja from the convenience store next door and do a bit of jogging, swigging out of the wine bottle, as I ran down the high street. It was just too early for that. I shall wait until sunset.
I found this very convenient wrist bottle on the net for the athletically minded young woman who likes a bit of Chardonnay while she jogs or works out. Weighs half a pound when fully loaded – so a bit of extra exercise as well.
Is it too late for me to apply to run in the London Marathon this year? I do hope so.
I must go now to meditate… to prepare myself to a state of zen in preparation for lunch and the composition and writing of my ‘Weekend Review’. Alternatively, I may contact the Archbishop of Canterbury to see if he needs any help with his next public speech. His last effort won “God Idol”. His next one may get him a hosting position on “Have I got Gods for You”.
Perhaps next stop for his Grace – ‘I’m an archbishop – get me out of here!’ – wouldn’t blame him…
“Strictly Come Ice Skating”….?….
You’re in luck – much too late for London – but perhaps I can suggest some alternatives?
You have rumbled me Peter…. !