venta

My month of self-imposed beverage exile ended yesterday. By the middle of the day I'd managed to work my way through hot-water-with-lemon-juice (my usual first drink of the morning), fizzy cranberry squash, coffee, banana smoothie and prosecco. I added proper beer (Old Speckled Hen, as it happened) in the afternoon and improper beer (Tsing Tao) in a Chinese restaurant in the evening. Tea appears to have been an unexpected omission which I and my giant magic doesn't-fall-over-mug are now remedying.

( The problem with programmers )

And if you were intending to donate me WaterAid some money - or were waiting to see if I succeeded before you committed cash - it's not too late!

I've just finished a bottle of Princes Gate "still natural Welsh spring water". It tasted repellently of plastic, but that's probably my fault for leaving a half-drunk bottle lying about on my desk for a week.

As I considered whether I could throw the bottle accurately into the recycling box from my desk (unlikely), I noticed that the label says:

"Lovingly drawn and bottled on our fully Organic site in Pembrokeshire, Wales."

The "Organic" is in yellow (the remainder of the text is a sort of soothing blue).

Which led me to think... hang on a minute, this is naturally-occurring water. In a plastic bottle. What is there to get all organic about? I assume we're talking organic in the food-accreditation sense rather than the chemistry sense. They're big on the idea that all they do is wait 15 years for rainwater to filter through rocks and then put the outcome in a bottle. Maybe they only feed the rocks on naturally-produced fertisiliers, or something.

Having visited their website (which was a challenge, because the URL on the bottle returns a 404), I think it means that their bottling plant is on a farm, and the (largely-unrelated) dairy business is organic.

I can't help feeling it's a little disingenuous advertising bottled spring water as organic, though.