Ho-hum, it seems I am ploughing a lonely furrow of esoteric knowledge here, I think I need a stiff Perrier…
As kids we used to suck the taps directly, unless there was a water fountain (always one or two in the local parks). They provided a straight-up spurt at the push of a brass button, directly into the gratefully open gob.
Delicious. Never vandalised and always worked.
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You were obviously in a posher place than we were… 
On a similar basis I intend to ask at my local Leclerc to see if it is possible to buy 8x croissants without the plastic container - this should push my spoken French somewhat.
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Buy them at a boulangerie.
I now take a quantity of thin cotton bags in various sizes when I go shopping, and buy everything en vrac. These are the bags in question, you could make them yourself, obviously.
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I don’t think anyone would ever call Birmingham posh, Stella…
I used to lie in bed as a child listening to the thud-thud-thud of the 20-ton night-shift presses at the nearby (2 miles) Longbridge Austin Motor Works, banging out car and van bodies…posh it weren’t!
Peter, if my water tastes foul and I chose to either use a filter or even horrors buy bottled water then I shall do so.
If you chose to drink your own piss then that’s your choice but you do come across as being holier than thou and too judgemental!
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There were no brass buttons on fountains near where I lived… but we did have the sea to lull us to sleep or we would lie awake and listen to the “moaning Minnie” foghorns of boats beating there way up the coast in bad weather 
Don’t take my remarks personally, Ann. I’m railing against the more general pollution of the environment with plastic, which people are just beginning to wake up to.
That pollution is the product of a wanton and wasteful industry selling bottled water which is a modern phenomenon that I find incredibly silly, unnecessary, and driven by powerful advertising.
It’s not holier than thou to comment on environmental vandalism fueled by what seems to me to be mindless consumption.
No-one, it seems, feels comfortable these days without being accessorised by a disposable cup of coffee or a throw-away £1.30 bottle of water with a suckable nipple.
Of course you must do as you see fit, but I want freedom to give my opinions on an important subject without attracting insults from others who don’t like what I say. I’m 100% against the widespread and normative sale of bottled water at outrageous prices and huge social cost.
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Mineral water came in glass bottles when I was growing up, I don’t drink anything that comes in a plastic bottle nowadays. I think we should go back to glass for everything and I don’t see what is wrong with tap water. Except in Cairo where it was so thick with chlorine you could see the internal currents in the glass. Apparently if tap water has a taste you dislike, bunging a bit of charcoal in a jugful sorts it out.
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To be honest, the more I read about (plastic) bottled water, the more I realise I’ve been done like a kipper! What a sham and lots (!) of us, mere mortals that is, fell for it!
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what are you going to do with all the money you will be saving…
Gin Stella - gin ! My view is I’m not going to live forever anyway…hard to accept but there you have it 
My personal favorite - click the pic
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Looks wonderful, and such a pretty bottle - you might like its neighbour Lussa Gin, made on Jura in small quantities 
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Vero it’s sublime and I’ll definitely look up Lussa! Who needs bottled water? Don’t know what I was thinking lol!
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Obviously you and yours have been very lucky and not suffered allergies and intolerances
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I found some great gin ‘additives’ over the border last month from Toque World (click the pic)
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That’s true, Nellie, and I acknowledge a genetic component to my relative ‘good fortune’ in that regard. But I also believe that my physical constitution has been grounded in an infancy and childhood in the late 1930s and early 1940s: a period of stringent rationing; a climate that promoted resilience and self-sufficiency; a dearth of anything resembling luxury; and an outdoor childhood of exploration and discovery of the natural world.
We also enjoyed a liberal education at the hands of teachers with a free hand to practice their professional and vocational skills, free of central government interference.
People of the same age as me seem to enjoy the same or similar physique and general good all-round health, and the same progressive outlook on life that I would claim (perhaps immodestly) for myself.
The modern lifestyle seems to be subverting health and resilience, fostering undue dependence on technology and the state, and overstating the importance of luxury, consumption, and spurious individualism.
But the world is facing a huge crisis of redistribution and the collapse of privilege. I shan’t live to see it’s déroulement, and I have mixed feelings about its outcomes.
Not one spoonful of refined sugar passed my lips until I was in my sixth year of life, and I have never taken sugar in my drinks. I think that has helped, even if I sometimes seem a bit sour 
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Evian = Naiv.
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Graham, whilst you mentioned Peckham spring, it reminded me of Sidcup’s cocacola bottling facility that was bottling tap water and selling it at highly inflated drinks prices.
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