Month: December 2025

*Apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It is rare enough for Tunbridge Wells to appear in anybody’s newsfeed. Beyond the usual “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells”, it is, in most people’s books little more than a minor tourist town between London and the cost. Although I believe (before my time really) that there was a poll tax riot in TW. Obviously not a riot in the sense of Toxteth but, in our dainty terms, a riot nonetheless. Several teacups were knocked over along The Pantiles and a couple of pensioners jostled outside the library although apologies were immediately forthcoming. A wing mirror was cracked on a car although the owner later suggested that it was already weakened.

Of course I can verify none of this. I came to Tunbridge Wells a decade or so later, before these events and mischief making acquired the status of legend. Honestly, my alibi is watertight.

On the subject of water (did you see what I did there?) Tunbridge Wells has been much in the news over the last two weeks. And I don’t mean a byline in The Courier or Sevenoaks Chronicle. No I mean national newspapers and broadcasters. We even got on television before the latest acts of lunacy from the White House resumed its stranglehold on the airwaves.

All of this is my way of saying that the water crisis in Tunbridge Wells has not been resolved. National newspapers and media outlets may be taking no interest now but the problem that caused their interest in the first place has not gone away. Okay we have water coming out of our taps at more or less full-strength. But we are still being urged, nay instructed, to boil all such water before ingesting it. This is at the very least an inconvenience.

In fairness, being apparently on the water authority’s “A List” as a result of the Parkinson’s, I don’t even have to fetch and carry. SE Water delivers it to me. I only have to leave the house for an instant and another twelve bottles appear on the doorstep. I finally drew that to a halt but not before a total of 84 bottles – that’s 168 litres – have been delivered. Far from being simply drought relief in a manner of speaking, this now poses a significant drowning hazard. The bath is full of bottles. There are bottles everywhere. And, in fairness to SE Water, if it were not for this allowance, life really would be challenging.

For the moment, the flyer from the government making clear that tap water must be boiled remains in force. But as of today (Friday) there is no indication of when the ban will be lifted. Not a squeak from SE Water or Westminster. Even the scientific explanations of prior and current events have rather dried up. A pity because, any absence of credible information provides fertile ground for conspiracy theories. Moreover, the chief executive of SE Water remains in post without a whiff of a resignation in the offing. And it’s not as though SE Water has an unblemished record of performance. It has previous. Continuing to reiterate the “just-boil-the-tap-water-and-it’s-fine” mantra while the chief executive hangs on by his fingernails doesn’t fool anyone. After all, they said the same after Camelford.

For around 9000 homes in my town, Tunbridge Wells, the last three days have been accented by a mains water supply failure. I won’t bore you with the details, only to say that, in the continuing imbalance between consumer expectations and shareholder dividends, there is only ever one winner. I’ll give you a clue – it’s not the ones searching for standpipes in the street or having to visit the local sports centre to pick up their allocation of water (around six bottles per capita). At peak demand (around Sunday lunchtime), a stationary queue of traffic extended most of the way out of Tunbridge Wells, beyond the sports centre, most of the way to Tonbridge, along St John’s Road. For those of you who do not know the locale, you will just have to take my word for it. It’s a traffic jam of biblical magnitude. The local MP has already called for the head of South Eastern Water, on a silver salver. Okay I made up the last bit – he may keep his head and – but will presumably lose his job.

You might imagine that this this supply pico-problem would be particularly trying for those of compromised mobility such as we Parkies – my nearest ‘bottled water station’ is a mile away on foot. In other words out of the walking range of many disabled.

Although there appears to be a general absence of any serious contingency plan for such an aqueous interruption, I can’t fault them here. I was aware on Saturday morning that something was amiss when I opened my front door to be greeted by 12 litres of mineral water. Various peeps have offered to help carrying the bottles in. Three hours later, another six have arrived unannounced. And then a further six around late afternoon.

The following morning, I open the front door to another 12, a virtual tsunami
of bottled water. Although still in my pyjamas, I scan the horizon for people hiding behind trees or dustbins clutching bottles and waiting to pounce with more water. They are stealthy, waiting till I leave the house, however briefly, to bring yet more.

And the water comes from Devon, Brecon, Lichfield and Cumbria, affording me the luxury of a blind tasting. The ‘blind tasting’, that bedrock of the wine industry reveals next to nothing about these waters. My palate is unable to tell between Devon and Cumbria, between Brecon and Lichfield. Or any with any other.

One of the bottles is simply labelled “Courtesy Water”, as though such a title is meaningful. This particular water, despite claiming it is fit for all domestic purposes still requires boiling before use to make up infant feeds. It is also the only water that offers no detailed mineral analysis. The others are positively effusive, openly flaunting their respective sodium, potassium, and calcium. One is even so confident as to list its ingredients – water apparently. And a Best Before Date. There’s confidence.

By the end of the second day of deprivation, the mains water is conspicuous by its absence and further bottles arrive in the time it takes me, or would normally take me, to shower. The bottled water suppliers are gaining in confidence, describing their water as “wildly refreshing”. Another is brought to us from “a Small Cottage in the Beautiful Brecon Beacons National Park”. It even has a Facebook page.

Meanwhile South-Eastern water is beginning to run out of apologies, having run out of water a some four days earlier. But I know they are “very sorry” (Sunday morning), “working round-the-clock” (same evening), “slowly sending water to the drinking water storage tank” (Monday morning) and “water is gradually returning” (yesterday afternoon). By 9 PM yesterday evening they were “making good progress and seeing supplies gradually return”. By this morning (Tuesday) they were “continuing to make progress” without detailing how. By 2 PM, we were informed that the bottled water stations would remain open until 10 PM although we had been told they would be unnecessary from Sunday. The latest bulletin explains that they are still very sorry and reassures us that they “understand how incredibly tough this is for the community”. You don’t say.

I am keeping my head down. For me this is not so much a problem of water absence as the deluge of bottled water. At least that seems to have at least peaked. There is water in every cupboard and crevice. Far from being short of water I am practically awash with bottled water. I have at least stopped the fly tipping of water on my doorstep. In terms of their response, I cannot fault them.

Mindful of The Wedding Feast at Cana, I’m thinking I might offer a reversed version – people could bring wine to me and I could give them water in return. But please, no more bottled water – enough already!