Water Obsession

 

Thirsty
Middleton Alexander Jameson (1851-1919)
Photo Credit: Brampton Museum [CC  BY-NC]

The novelist Sir Ian McEwan has tackled many difficult subjects, from betrayal to trauma to death, but now he has taken on the biggest of them all: water bottles.

The Atonement author, 77, said at the Cheltenham Literature Festival... that he was perplexed by the modern obsession with drinking copious amounts of water, describing it as "a derangement".

"Thirty years ago, no one had bottles of water," he said. "You had a drink from the tap when you got home and suddenly we were persuaded that you can't go ten minutes without being thirsty. This is a derangement."

The writer said he was appalled by the modern obsession with such receptacles. Being seen with a reusable bottle has become fashionable: celebrities from Adele to Olivia Rodriguez have been photographed carrying 1.2 litre Stanley flasks, which cost about £40...

"I feel whenever I'm chucking out another plastic bottle that we're all in this madness."

The NHS website recommends drinking six to eight cups or glasses of water per day. Tea and coffee both count, as do low-fat milk and sugar-free drinks.

McEwan, who lives in the Cotswolds, said: [There are] millions of plastic bottles everywhere, as if being thirsty is a terrible affliction. It only is in extremes. You just wait 20 minutes and go and have a cup of tea. How did it come about that we've accepted this?

"You see people walking down the street with a bottle of water. If that was the 1950s, someone would think, 'What's that person doing?'"...

Towards the end of his one-hour talk, however, McEwan had a water-related issue of his own.

"There's a moment - and this is rather urgent for me - in Huckleberry Finn where Finn goes behind a bush to say 'I've got to confer with myself,'" he said, creating some confusion in the audience.

"That's what I need to do. Can you bear it? I've just got to walk off and do this."

He came back on stage a few minutes later to applause and explained, laughing: "Sorry about that, but it's very hard to talk about poetry when you need a pee."

(Emily Prescott, The Sunday Times, 2025)

If celebrities are carrying bottles of water that alone should automatically make you think twice.  What's the point of it all? Drink from the tap if you are thirsty. MacEwan is right. Spending huge amounts of money on a water bottle or drinking water when you don't need to is a form of derangement. He was also right in that when you've got to go - you go!