Wow. It's Almost Congo Weather! What's More. No South West Water Problems Either. Yet.
t's a 'Dirty Business' being a holidaymaker nowadays. Just wait til the jellyfish come out in protest. The Almighty Gob — Bristol's most forensic observer of institutional power, since 2020.
[It's a Dirty Business being a holidaymaker nowadays. South West Water. Fourteen consecutive red ratings. And still, somehow, the deck chairs are full. The Almighty Gob]
You know, it was only last week, while it was still a cold and miserable Spring, that somewhere considerably warmer and less touristy would be perfect for me, right now. And, well, the Congo looked quite promising. No deck chair availability challenges. No danger of a seagull swooping down and nicking your stick of rock. No candyfloss vendors. No amusement arcade within probably a hundred miles. If at all.
It was either that or stay in England.
What Kinshasa Calls Tuesday.
And then the forecast said heatwave.
What Kinshasa calls probably, most days of the week, most years. Though, I might have a quiet word with John Ketley, Britain’s legendary weatherman. For final confirmation. Michael Fish being now, slightly less reliable.
Difficult choice.
Ebola or E. coli. Eventually, E. coli won the day.
Same joke. Different locations.
Of course, and again, on the plus side. Faced with a few weeks of impending protests as people continue to march through our streets, for whatever feels like a good idea at that time, I found it hard to imagine the same happening in the Congo. You know, people marching on behalf of migrants arriving in Britain. And, I must admit, this alone had a certain appeal to it. Though. Never say never.
Raw Sewage, the Tide, and the Alphabetical Order of Medical Emergencies.
Furthermore. Nowadays, it seems, even when the tide goes out, it almost pauses a little too long, before deciding whether it’s actually worth coming back in again. As I reflected on that, and the thought of potentially being ankles deep in raw sewage, the two destinations suddenly came into sharper perspective.
Maybe, it was the sudden thought of how medical definitions conveniently appear in almost alphabetical order. Unlike life itself. Generally speaking.
Oh, and South West Water. Don’t get me started. This is the privatised utility responsible for a significant portion of England’s designated bathing waters, fined £24 million by Ofwat in September 2025 for breaching its legal obligations, and the holder of a red rating for pollution incidents across fourteen consecutive years — has, in its own quiet way, reframed the entire conversation about what a British summer holiday actually involves. The Environment Agency’s data is publicly available. Ofwat’s assessments are on record. Surfers Against Sewage have been documenting it since 1990. The Almighty Gob has noted before that institutions reveal themselves not through press releases, but through the gap between what they say and what ends up in the water.
So. No postcard home from the Congo saying: I visited the Congo and all I got was Ebola. This year, at least.
And, it has to be said, no postcard from the seaside saying: I visited the British coast and all I got was E. coli. Though not, one suspects, for want of opportunity.
The Smell of Fresh Sea Air, South West Water, and What the Seagulls Knew.
Let’s be honest. There’s nothing quite like the smell of fresh sea air. Is there? You know, when you can find it. I did, not so long ago. Fleetwood. As I recall.
However. There is, it has to be said, some comfort in being on a West Country beach knowing that any moment a dinghy isn’t going to suddenly arrive full of people who don’t look as if they’d been out on a fishing excursion. For mackerel.
Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Things Children Find.
I remember, from my childhood, the excitement of looking under rocks for crabs. Of course, it’s different nowadays. I don’t quite picture the same excitement of a child finding a washed up passport instead. From a country they’ve probably never heard of. Even flotsam and jetsam evolves with the times, it seems.
When the Seagulls Stop Diving.
Oh, and here’s something else you may have noticed. When the seagulls come inland to feed, it says something about the quality of the water they were once happy to dive into.
These are not, it bears repeating, fastidious creatures. A seagull will steal a chip from a pushchair, fight a pensioner for a pasty, and raise a family in a supermarket car park without a second thought. Their standards are not, historically, high. And yet. Here they are. Inland. Making a considered decision.
The data exists, of course. South West Water’s record is publicly documented. The Environment Agency publishes it. Ofwat monitors it. What none of them have thought to publish is the seagull index — the point at which even the birds do the calculation and decide the cheese bakes outside Greggs are the safer option. Somewhere further inland.
It’s time to call in the SAS, perhaps. You know, Surfers Against Sewage. If they’re not already there.
Nobody asked why the seagulls left. Nobody joined the dots. The question was there, every summer, on every beach. Hanging in the air that wasn’t quite sea air. Taken by nobody.
So. When the jellyfish begin walking down the promenade, we then, finally, know we have a real problem.
And the Congo, for all its challenges, never once asked anyone to paddle through something that would fail a basic chemistry test while pretending the forecast said otherwise.
Same joke. Different locations. The Congo and the British seaside. Ebola and E. coli. The seagulls who left, and the jellyfish who are, as yet, still in the water.
Give it time.
The Almighty Gob is a Bristol-based publication founded by John Langley — independent Bristol mayoral candidate 2016 and 2021, and one of the city’s most forensic observers of institutional power. Publishing since 2020, with over 500 pieces across seven platforms and Substack at thealmightygob.com — no party allegiance, no press accreditation, no interest in acquiring either.
© 2026 John Langley / The Almighty Gob. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any part of this article without express written permission is prohibited. The Almighty Gob asserts the moral right of the author to be identified as the creator of this work under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.