Over the past few years, Jane and I have bought quite a lot of bottled water. Specifically, we’ve gone through a lot of supermarket low-cost sparkling water. It isn’t as cheap as what comes in the tap but I don’t think we could carbonate it as cheaply. As far as I’m aware, the bottles are relatively easy for recycling plants to deal with and it makes an attractive drink on its own (very healthy) or mixed with other things.

The price has gone up over the last year or even just the past few months. For a long while, I had been used to 17p for a 2l bottle but Lidl recently pushed it to 24p and then, in the last two or three weeks, to 31p. What’s that? About an 85% cost inflation? It makes the increase on products like milk look relatively small!

I expect that a decision has been taken to no longer push sparkling water as a loss leader or minimal profit item. It is still significantly cheaper than most other drinks you can buy but I have to say that I’m starting to return to the plain old “tap” variety – not quite as exciting but just as thirst quenching.