A Drinker’s Tale

On the scale of international drinking waters, I’m sure London’s isn’t actually that bad, but the thought is always there: This sip has been sipped before, sipped by thousands of people, thousands of times. Sipped, pissed, processed. Dripped from a tap, processed. Sipped, digested along with a meal of caviar and toast then pissed. The occasional drop may have holidayed for a week or two in Camden pub, abandoned in glass lost amongst the wilder edges of the beer garden, or perhaps taken a year’s sabbatical in a Battersea flat’s central heating system. And then, with no pause for sediment to collect it’s back into the system. Process, sip, piss. Process.

It all ends up tasting the same. Artificially clean. Absolved of its former lives and associated misadventure. The hint of chlorine a negative image of evidence removed.

I always filter it though, just in case.