No, really. I am.
I drink water at work so I don’t have to contribute to the tea kitty. Not only that, I buy a 1ltr bottle of water from the local newsagent, drink it, and then hijack the water cooler in the staffroom (paid for by one of the other operators who share my work’s building) and refill it from there every day after.
I tell you this as a precursor to the main subject of my post.
Because yesterday, it occurred to me that it was time for me to buy a new bottle of water. Not so much for the water but for the bottle. Because mine was starting to look green around the rim. Not only that, despite emptying it out and refilling it, I noticed that there was precipitate in it.
Small furry occurrences of matter that hung in suspension around the mid-point of the bottle.
So I decided that my immune system had been exercised enough and trotted off to acquire a new bottle of aqua vitae (narrowly avoiding Cap’n Jack Sparrow in the queue at the newsagents).
I settled on a bottle of Highland Spring.
I took it back to the office whereupon I was so bored by my surroundings that I distracted myself by reading the label on the bottle.
“Drawn from Organic Land”.
That is what it said under the product’s name. It’s obviously a major selling point, this organic land.
But what exactly is it?
See, I figured that all land is organic by default. Or is this a subtle way of telling me that Highland Spring Ltd haven’t just collected up the run-off from a landfill site to the northwest of Birmingham and bottled up the resulting sump?
What is non-organic land? Concrete? Plastic? Bacofoil? The main arena at the NEC? Are there whole fields comprised of polyester and Kevlar that I have missed on my many travels around this (not so green and pleasant) land?
Do these places feature natural springs whose water might be confused with that drawn from real, mud and soil, land? You know; old school terra firma, made the old fashioned way by nature and the slow laws of geology?
Because, given a choice, I’d quite like to try some “bionic water” (my phrase and, yes, I am going to copyright it) drawn from non-organic land. It’s the type of thing that could well turn somebody into Spiderman or Swamp Thing provided it contained the right amount of genetically modified contaminates and unintentional ingredient X’s.
And that would be pretty cool, you must admit.
I could wreak havoc on the masses, not to mention the misses in my office. I’d have an excuse never to come into work again. I could become a crime fighter or even a master criminal. I could be on the telly every night.
Aqua vitae indeed.
It would also be a far more permanent and exciting way of alleviating my terminal boredom than by reading the label on a sodding water bottle.
46 comments:
I'm a little stuck on: "Small furry occurrences of matter that hung in suspension around the mid-point of the bottle." GAH!!
My husband did a photo once for a newspaper about a natural springs water company. He went to the place where the water was supposedly being sourced. The well had dried up years ago.
I had to throw away my disposable razor yesterday, the handle was completely worn out. As for the non organic water that would be Irn Bru.
Bigwords is: ah the ol' Peckham Spring ruse as illustrated by those industrious boys at Trotter Independent Trading...
Joe: Irn Bru. Of course. Made from girrrrders. ;-)
Try well water in rural France...you'd be drinking traces of every chemical known to man except napalm...which for some reason does not seem to be available on the cheap under the Common Agricultural Policy,
The fly in the web: now I understand why the French drink so much wine.
Now you've got a new bottle, maybe you could use the old one to syphon off all that wind you've been having? Recycling would suit a tight old bugger like you ;-)
Will you wear a cape?
Trish: I think the resultant Molotov cocktail / dirty bomb might see me fall foul of the UK's anti-terrorism laws.
The Undertaker: I prefer to save that item of clothing for use in the bedroom.
I'll buy a bottle of your bionic aqua vitae sump stuff. Sounds DELICIOUS! With an exciting label on it... florescent maybe? Just to show how many chemicals are in it. In fact, that could be your USP... LOADSA chemicals. Marvellous stuff. Oh, and glad that you have ditched that old bottle with the worrying sediments... (precipitate?) I have done the same with mine... the bottle was actually beginning to lose shape. Honestly, does NOTHING last these days... ;)
Ladybird World Mother: your bottle was beginning to lose its shape?!? You do know those things have a non-biodegradable half-life of a thousand years, don't you? Just how long had you kept your bottle?! ;-)
I can't help thinking that any product which talks about "organic" should be shunned.
The use of that adjective is a clear indication that the manufacturers and their advertisers see their customers as total tossers who will swallow anything.
Have you tried concentrated or freeze dried water?
Marginalia: I haven't but I have tried oven-ready and processed water. They tasted about the same.
No amount of bionic water would make you macho. You'd have to eat bulls' bollocks to get your hormone levels high enough. And then shave off your beard and glue it to your chest.
On the plus side you are now probably immune to every lurgy the workplace is liable to throw at you.
Bit like going back to kindergarten.
LCM x
Gorilla Bananas: I find your innate lack of faith in my appropriate hirsuteness disappointing - and misplaced. My wife herself will tell you that I am part man, part Persian rug.
Steve, I'm getting worried about Gorilla Bananas.
LCM what do you mean bit like?!?
Marginalia: I'm not. He's probably the sanest of us all (if a little wild).
What about the spa water outside? is that tap still there? although in my memory it never tasted good....
Libby: it tastes like an old man's sweat. I think I'd rather go back to the precipitate in my old bottle.
Having regularly licked the sheen off Wembley arena loading bay I am with you 100%. In fact, if you do go into business with your bionic water, can I do the labels ?
Design them, I mean, not lick ! Although...
Keith: consider yourself commissioned. I just know you'll be committed.
Surely tap water would have that effect, especially if mixed with some aspartame rich cordial.
Very Bored in Catalunya: I think, even without the mixer, tap water is pretty hallucinogenic these days.
Would you have different super power flavours? so the one with the red label gives you ability to shoot spider webs from your wrists and climb buildings; the white the power of invisibility; the blue one the ability to fly; and so on and so forth?
Heather: I think we need to get together and discuss a proper marketing campaign. I think Keith above is keen to design the labels. Really all we need is an actual product.
I think you mis understood. This is from a place called Organic Land, it's like Scot Land but purer
Selling bottled water sounds a good idea .Remember the Only Fools and Horses episode where Del Boy sold Peckham Spring Water? Classic :)
Nota Bene: "like Scot Land but purer..." So basically anywhere else in the world, then?
Ally: ooh yes, already alluded to the great Del Boy in a previous comment above!
Look on the bright side. My husband just came back from India. While there he bought a bottle of water from a shop and within two hours of drinking it he had the shits for three days. He said he later looked more carefully at the bottle and it seems the rascals had refilled the bottle from the local well. I think the water in the bottle was organic, just maybe a tad too organic if you know what i mean!
Emma: it sounds like the water became a lot more organic on it's quick passage through your husband's body than when it first entered... and it was possibly quite organic to begin with.
Please excuse the blonde moment Steve , that will teach me to read things carefully :)
Bionic water? I'm in! And I do the same thing with water bottles, refilling them from the tap, until I notice the backwash (you had a better word) floating around. Yuck! Glad you avoided Cap'n Jack. What do you Brits think of Johnny's accent? (Or is there, perhaps, a real Cap'n Jack Sparrow in your neighbourhood.)
Ally: some things are so good they're worth mentioning twice. ;-)
Femminismo: what accent? ;-)
Jody here again. This makes me feel quite queasy and happy with Oakland's tap finest. Yes, what is a spring. I know a couple of years ago in Britain they did a taste test of water by experts and in first place was water from a toilet in Birmingham. So may save my money...
Organic land? And I suppose it was an organic vehicle that got the water to your local shop too?
Such bollocks
I went around a waterworks once, honestly if you saw what I saw you would never allow your bottle to get like that again. The bloke explained it as when you keep ham in tupperware you wash it out before putting new ham in, why wouldn't you do that with a bottle and he showed us eurrrrrgh why. And do you know how much crap there is even in the Organic water- scratch that especially in the organic water! Boiled water is the only way to go.
About Last Weekend: did they specify which toilet? And was it pre or post flushing?
Marks: bollocks are, at least, organic.
Kelloggsville: I'm quite partial to boiled ham too.
I can't actually get past the state of your water bottle. Or what happened to EmmaK's husband!
I'd really like to try some of that water grown on polyester. Despite it's bad reputation, polyester has always been good to me.
Are you sure it's only water you've been drinking ?
:-)
And I can only second the above reference explaining why the French drink so much wine. There are places where there is so much fertilizer runoff into the sea in Brittany that the algae blooms caused by it are so huge that they give off enough toxic gas to have actually killed a horse which was walking on the beach not long ago... his lungs weren't well adapted to all that organic gas...
But furry water ? Had never heard of that before reading this... thanks for enlightening us to yet another danger to beware of in this most dangerous of worlds.
One of my favourite pubs used to be called Aqua Vitae!! It had a to die for wine selection...it's now been renamed as the GP's...and in it's first life was a brothel! Now then, what was I really going to say....
Being Me: it was hard to palate, I must admit.
Organic Motherhood with Cool Whip: I have to make sure I stick to Autumn colours, myself.
Owen: it's like War of the Worlds, baby. It's the little blighters that'll do for us, not the biggys.
Amanda: from a brothel to the water of life...? I'm sure there must be a joke in there somewhere... not sure if anyone would swallow it though.
Steve, I’m getting worried about Marginalia.
The ‘Drawn from Organic land’ line in actuality is reference to the land of ‘Organs’, which as most women know is a land called ‘Africa’. Thus it is Afro tribal water, divined from the scorched earth of the continent of ‘humanoid phallus colossi’. It’s a rarely found brand of mineral water held in high regard by the indigenous organics that sell it on the black market along the Ivory Coast. I thought you would have known that.
Loved Joebloggs’s razor comment. Very funny. How to make a non disposable beard smoother. Brilliant.
Gorilla’s just fine by the way. It’s just the mating season tis all. Soon as he stops playing with his bananas and does a bit of swingin again, he’ll become a real softy again you just see.
Phil: are you saying my organic water is just a bottle of piss?
Not necessarily Steve. It’s still an outside statistical possibility that it’s cloudy orangeade. The vagrants they get to do the bottle labelling out there are often blind on dodgy ganja juice. Try sniffing it.
Have you kept the receipt?
Phil: kept the receipt? Of course I didn't. I rolled it up and smoked it.
Was I not supposed to do that?
Post a Comment