25 January 2023

Alcohol

ALCOHOL - THREE
New micropub round the corner from our house

My drink of preference is beer. I might have a glass of wine with Sunday dinner but mostly it's beer. In our drinks cabinet I have six bottles of whisky (Scottish) and whiskey (Irish). Four of them have never been opened. Months will pass by before I have another shot of that fiery liquid. Though I like it, I can live without it.

Nowadays I have at least three alcohol-free days in a normal week. During national  pub closures in the time of  COVID, there was a period of three months when I didn't have a single drop of alcohol. It just didn't appeal to me  any more and I didn't miss it either.

I am glad that I  have a more healthy relationship with alcohol than I did in my student days. This is partly down to my wife Shirley who arguably reined me in like a cowgirl training a wild bronco. Decades have passed since I last lost it under the influence of the demon drink. I hardly ever drink in the daytime and if I visit a pub at night, I will usually only go for the last hour knowing that if I went any earlier I would be tempted to exceed the three or four pints I usually guzzle.

Here's another alcohol story I want to share - about a woman of our acquaintance who was a senior academic nurse - working with nursing students in a university. She had done so well to get there. 

Two years ago she attended a posh dinner dance in a pretty exclusive venue. She had donned her best gown and put on her new high heels. Like many people there, she had taken full advantage of the free bar and was more than a little tiddly. Holding a glass of fizzy wine, she began to descend  a wide stone staircase but tripped on her heels and tumbled down those unforgiving steps, fracturing her skull and causing herself a serious  brain injury.

At the age of sixty she now lives in a dementia unit, her personality disordered and it seems certain that she will never get back to being the successful professional woman that she once was. You might say that it was the high heels that did it but I have a feeling that if she had avoided alcoholic drinks that fateful night she would have coped with those heels just fine. It was the drink that did it.

This afternoon I went out to a pub with my old friend Bert. I hadn't seen him since before Christmas and as prearranged I drove him to "The Rising Sun" at Nether Green. A dozen draught beers were available at the bar - nearly all of them expertly brewed in Sheffield. Bert had three pints of "Daily Bread" but because I was driving I only had one pint and a coffee. We also had fish and chips with mushy peas for our lunch.

Bert is 87 and he's been drinking beer since he was a boy. It doesn't seem to have done him any harm. It was good to enjoy each other's company - helped by the ambience of a nice pub that has plentiful stocks of well-kept local  beers. Happy afternoons like that are also part of the tale of alcohol consumption.  It's not all  about danger signs and watching the number of "units" you pour down your neck. It's also about companionship, community  and relaxation.

26 comments:

  1. A fine conclusion, Neil.

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    1. Thanks. It is not all gloom, doom and recrimination. Cheers Bruce!

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  2. There is nothing I like better than chatting someplace over a coffee or a pint of my favorite amber ale. The ambiance of it enhances the conversation and relaxes me. I drink once or twice a week, usually 1 or 2 12 ounce beers. I do love English beers and pubs--the food is usually so good there too!

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    1. Many of our wonderful pubs have disappeared. It's like losing vital organs.

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  3. Alcohol is the social person's hashish as Norman Mailer remarked
    My father used to say, *Mailer is a nutcase, but an original nutcase.*

    Have we considered how alcohol is tied to music, excitement, romance ?
    Pixie in the previous post said a few drinks had her dancing, all shyness forgotten.

    Richard Burton would spend a quiet two weeks in his home in Wales, reading.
    Back at a party in London he had to have a drink in his hand to tell a funny story.

    Before sleep I am having a second small glass of white Muscat, vin douce.
    I have been listening to music on YouTube.
    *Emily Linge - Gentle On My Mind.*
    *Emily Linge - Hey Jude.*
    *Cheek to Cheek - Jazz Lag.*
    *Lullaby of Birdland - Jazz Lag.*
    *Laura - Carly Simon.*
    *So Many Stars - Stacey Kent Experience.*
    *You and the Night and the Music - Ella Fitzgerald.*

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    1. Healthy and good. Thanks for your thoughtful response John.

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  4. More people should be like you and take precaution and responsibility when driving.

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    1. Really - I don't like to drink anything when driving but that wasn't always the case Red.

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  5. High heels and stairs are always a dangerous combination, although going up the stairs is not so bad. Add in alcohol and the danger factor multiplies. This is why elevators were invented? Anyway, that's a sad story and I'm sorry to read such a thing happened, does she ever remember what she once was?

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    1. Yes - I believe she does. Though very much changed she is not a vegetable. She has many moments of lucidity and distress over what happened. She is the sister-in-law of one of my wife's cousins.

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  6. I wholeheartedly agree with your last three sentences. When I arrive at O.K.'s on a Friday night after a long working week and long (often delayed) train journey, our evening meal - usually starting at about 9:00 or 9:30 pm - together is the highlight of the week for me. Just to be with O.K. is wonderful, but the whole evening is enhanced by the bottle of wine we usually share with our customary bread, cheese and salad.
    At the pub with my friends, I almost always have two pints of cider to last me the entire pub quiz evening. My friends have beer, and usually one of them who drives only has one pint and then switches to coke or some other soft drink.

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    1. I trust that when you refer to coke you do not mean cocaine!

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    2. You trust rightly!

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  7. That's a very sad story about the woman at the dinner dance. One tiny mistake and her life completely changed. I guess the matter is easily summed up with the common phrase, alcohol can be a good friend but a terrible master.

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  8. I don't swear, I don't smoke and I don't drink. " Oh bloody hell I have left my cigs in the pub". Bert knows best.

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  9. Here, we have the same alcohol related tragedies but are now starting to get marijuana ones as well, a drug in another form.

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    1. Driving under the influence of marijuana would be as bad as alcohol - if not - worse!

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    2. Here in Aus. mums dropping off kiddies at school are randomly checked a couple of times a year and many are found to have marijuana or meth (ice) in their system as well as alcohol. Drugged mums driving little kids to school!!

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  10. I have a drink almost every day, but rarely more than two and almost never during the daytime. I often have a G&T when I get home from work, and usually a glass of wine with dinner. I'll get a pint when we go out, but I never have beer at home for some reason.

    That's an awful story about the nursing supervisor! It sounds like one of those instances where several factors combine with a moment of plain old bad luck and suddenly everything changes. Frightening!

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    1. You seem to have your drinking under good control and you enjoy it too. Some doctors would say you are having too many units each week but screw them!

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  11. Beer in moderation is a sensible and enjoyable way to drink alcohol.

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    1. Happy to have the green light from you Tasker.

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  12. All things in life in moderation tends to be my approach. Probably why I'm the boring old fart that I've been since I was 17.

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    1. A genuinely boring old fart would not come up with such a funny remark!

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