An American came to stay – and completely changed my attitude to water | Emma Beddington

I hate water so much I once went on the radio to defend my stance. Then I was introduced to massive bags of ice ...

My son brought his girlfriend home last month and we really wanted to make things nice for her. We started with a shame-fuelled whirlwind clean, but were instantly betrayed the second our son stepped inside and exclaimed: It's so tidy! I've never seen it this clean!" (It got worse when he showed her my office, the portrait in the attic to the rest of the house's Dorian Gray.)

She is from the US, which added an extra set of anxieties about how we live, specifically around ice and water. I have watched enough TikTok videos of shocked, disgusted Americans complaining about European hospitality's inadequate water service and ice meanness to know that we are notoriously bad at providing sufficient, and sufficiently chilled, hydration for US visitors. Keen to do better, we scrambled to the supermarket to panic-buy bags of ice to fill the freezer, then affected a casual, offhand familiarity with this cold, watery way of life. Would you like iced water? Yes, we're always offering each other giant glasses of cold fluid brimming with ice cubes, extremely normal behaviour here!