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Drink for a better tomorrow.
Sep. 13th, 2010 11:13 amBack in the goode olde dayes when I was heavily involved in the Cam*, several times a year I'd jet over the Atlantic to use my British accent to pick up American girls chat to the Board of Directors face to face rather than the unfriendly medium of email. On one trip I was staggering into my hotel after the general misery of a cattle-class long-haul flight when I bumped into ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
riksowden. "Oh!", he said. "Hi, Dave. Look, I've got some good news for you."
"Good news?" I blearily asked.
"Yeah. They've got Sam Smiths on tap in the bar."
This was indeed good news as anyone who has ever drunk Budweiser or American-brewed Carlsberg will tell you. I checked my watch. "Well", I said. "The sun's over the yardarm. In England, anyway. Fancy a pint?"
The two of us retired to the bar and lined up a couple of drinks, at which point one of my online American chums wandered over to say hallo and clocked that we were drinking at lunchtime. I didn't twig the subtle change in attitude which came over them at the time, but later I learned they were very anti-alcohol and, because I was having a pint at lunchtime, they'd decided that I was obviously an alcoholic. I still laugh about this now.
Anyway, this got me thinking about attitudes to booze and what alcoholism is. I dont' know if you saw, but one of the most commented upon pieces of Tony Blair's autobiography is a confession that he relied upon alcohol as a crutch. He would drink maybe a glass of whisky and half a bottle of wine every day just to keep going. He was aware, he says, that he was "at the very limit".
At the very limit? I know people for whom a glass of whisky and half a bottle of wine are at the very limit of what they might notice. Unless that half bottle of wine was Buckfast I doubt anyone is very impressed. I suppose compared to teetotal George Bush Jr. Blair was a raging booze-hound, but Bush was a 'recovering alcoholic', which from what I've seen of polite attitudes to drink in the 'states means he once drank half a can of Bud Light and panicked. Back when William Hague was leader of the opposition he really should have made more of his claim to be able to drink 16 pints and challenged Blair to a drinking contest over an EU referendum.
History suggests that the more a politician drinks the better at the job they are**. Winston Churchill is famous for drinking at least two bottles of Champagne a day and then ringing Hitler to suggest they stepped outside and settled it like men - indeed, Hitler launched the Ardennes offensive in reaction to news that Churchill had been on a forty-eight hour bender and taken Juno beach singlehandedly. Further back in history, The Duke of Wellington killed Napoleon in a brawl outside the Lamb and Flag on St Helena dockside after tying one on and suggesting that Josephine could do with a bath. Margaret Thatcher kept herself topped up constantly for almost fifteen years with a two-litre bottle of Drambuie in her handbag at all times, and Pitt the Younger was getting served at his local when he was only eight years old. During the last election campaign David Cameron and Nick Clegg competed over claims of who could drink the most, with Cameron claiming to be able to sink eight pints without needing the toilet and Clegg riposting that anyone who drank only eight pints "is a bit of a puff, really". This led to people carrying "I agree with Nick" placards in the streets.
On the other hand, Sir Alec Douglas-Home believed anything more than a small sherry was an extravgance, Harold Wilson was so clueless he thought he could get tiddly off a pack of Maynards Wine Gums, and Neville Chamberlain became badly ill when he was only halfway down the glass of schnapps he was offered when visiting Hitler in 1937. Gordon Brown never drank a drop, but he at least made up for it with a prodigious intake of mescaline.
*One of the things I remain proudest of in my time running the CamUk was the international agreement I hammered out that travelling members were subject to the rules of their home country rather than the country they were visiting. I now confess I did this solely so I could get merrily stoked during events in the US whilst their own members were banned from doing so.
**Margaret "Bottle of vodka in my desk" Beckett being the honourable exception.
riksowden. "Oh!", he said. "Hi, Dave. Look, I've got some good news for you.""Good news?" I blearily asked.
"Yeah. They've got Sam Smiths on tap in the bar."
This was indeed good news as anyone who has ever drunk Budweiser or American-brewed Carlsberg will tell you. I checked my watch. "Well", I said. "The sun's over the yardarm. In England, anyway. Fancy a pint?"
The two of us retired to the bar and lined up a couple of drinks, at which point one of my online American chums wandered over to say hallo and clocked that we were drinking at lunchtime. I didn't twig the subtle change in attitude which came over them at the time, but later I learned they were very anti-alcohol and, because I was having a pint at lunchtime, they'd decided that I was obviously an alcoholic. I still laugh about this now.
Anyway, this got me thinking about attitudes to booze and what alcoholism is. I dont' know if you saw, but one of the most commented upon pieces of Tony Blair's autobiography is a confession that he relied upon alcohol as a crutch. He would drink maybe a glass of whisky and half a bottle of wine every day just to keep going. He was aware, he says, that he was "at the very limit".
At the very limit? I know people for whom a glass of whisky and half a bottle of wine are at the very limit of what they might notice. Unless that half bottle of wine was Buckfast I doubt anyone is very impressed. I suppose compared to teetotal George Bush Jr. Blair was a raging booze-hound, but Bush was a 'recovering alcoholic', which from what I've seen of polite attitudes to drink in the 'states means he once drank half a can of Bud Light and panicked. Back when William Hague was leader of the opposition he really should have made more of his claim to be able to drink 16 pints and challenged Blair to a drinking contest over an EU referendum.
History suggests that the more a politician drinks the better at the job they are**. Winston Churchill is famous for drinking at least two bottles of Champagne a day and then ringing Hitler to suggest they stepped outside and settled it like men - indeed, Hitler launched the Ardennes offensive in reaction to news that Churchill had been on a forty-eight hour bender and taken Juno beach singlehandedly. Further back in history, The Duke of Wellington killed Napoleon in a brawl outside the Lamb and Flag on St Helena dockside after tying one on and suggesting that Josephine could do with a bath. Margaret Thatcher kept herself topped up constantly for almost fifteen years with a two-litre bottle of Drambuie in her handbag at all times, and Pitt the Younger was getting served at his local when he was only eight years old. During the last election campaign David Cameron and Nick Clegg competed over claims of who could drink the most, with Cameron claiming to be able to sink eight pints without needing the toilet and Clegg riposting that anyone who drank only eight pints "is a bit of a puff, really". This led to people carrying "I agree with Nick" placards in the streets.
On the other hand, Sir Alec Douglas-Home believed anything more than a small sherry was an extravgance, Harold Wilson was so clueless he thought he could get tiddly off a pack of Maynards Wine Gums, and Neville Chamberlain became badly ill when he was only halfway down the glass of schnapps he was offered when visiting Hitler in 1937. Gordon Brown never drank a drop, but he at least made up for it with a prodigious intake of mescaline.
*One of the things I remain proudest of in my time running the CamUk was the international agreement I hammered out that travelling members were subject to the rules of their home country rather than the country they were visiting. I now confess I did this solely so I could get merrily stoked during events in the US whilst their own members were banned from doing so.
**Margaret "Bottle of vodka in my desk" Beckett being the honourable exception.
