Colm O'Regan: Staying hydrated — and how tea was the original Prime
Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan pictured in Cork. Pic: Denis Minihane.
Apparently, Americans on social media are sharing their concerns that Europeans don’t drink enough water.
As they lug around their fluid-oz and quarter gallon and demi-bushel and acre-foot containers of hydration, they notice the Europeans are not doing the same.
How are these dole-loving commies still standing if they don’t have water bottles? They don’t mention Ireland specifically, but if the Americans are worried about how much water we drink now, they should have seen us before.
Earlier generations hardly ever drank water. My father would come up from scything weeds in the height of summer in the cauldron of the river field and be gasping for TAE. The original Prime.
He lived to a good age and to the best of my knowledge there was no mention of dehydration being an issue in later years.
When we went on the epic beach day trips in the '80s, involving car breakdowns, being stuck behind cows, and wading through tailbacks in Macroom, I never remember drinking water during the hour we eventually spent on the strand. It was tae and Tanora.
Then at some point word went around you had to drink 8 glasses of water. And we’ve never looked back (except me when I’m writing about ‘back’.)
I have tried to hydrate properly. I got a bottle once that encouraged me with measurements on the side. By the hour. 16 hours to drink the two litres. Two fills. The habit lasted roughly as long as it took to write a column about it.
I don’t know why I failed. I just had no motivation to drink it. I felt I hadn’t earned it. The sup of water you take while procrastinating is simply not as sweet as the one from digging a hole.
And after recently digging a hole, I was so lost in the moment I forgot to drink water. And maybe I’ll pay for it shortly with a big dried pruney face on me but I simply don’t feel that thirsty.
If you believe in conspiracies which I choose to now and again when it’s fun, the whole hydration thing is surely just a ploy by the fossil fuel industry to stay relevant after we stop burning as much oil.
They’ll need us to keep buying funky plastic water bottles with positive affirmations written on them.
As I sip from my “You go, girlboss!” bottle, I’m thinking about a new back-to-school section in the shops: Next to the racks of slacks: hundreds and hundreds of water bottles.
Water bottles as far the eye can see. Crap water bottles that will experience a slight tremor and leak by September 8. Water bottles that will be lost like homework journals in the rain.
Yes, I suppose, technically it’s better than buying a new plastic bottle every day. But not by much. Why don’t people just reuse the one they got in the Tesco meal deal? It’s designed to not decompose until the year 2500. I think we could get a few uses out of it.
If we’re making containers for life, the answer is of course drinking fountains and enamel mugs attached to the schoolbag, like as if the children were going off to the front, humming Waltzing Matilda.
You know the mugs. You see them in films where the plucky young heroine begs the gruff heart-of-gold veteran to help save her village and he reluctantly agrees before taking one last slurp of tar-like coffee and hurling the dregs into a bush.
Either that or flasks. Big Thermos of soup, tea, and coffee for the kiddies. Designed to spill all over your Gluais Liom.
It won’t happen. There won’t be a clampdown on the ocean of plastic in the Back To School. I don’t think we have the bottle.
