Category Archives: Alcohol

A big man’s New Year Resolutions

Posted on 30 December 2011 | 1 Comment

Despite saying that I would not publish my new year’s resolutions, I’ve changed my mind. Making resolutions at the end of one year for the next appears to be terribly old unpopular these days. That’s a shame. Deciding to better yourself by goal setting can only be a good thing. Making them public makes them real. Private resolutions are much harder to obtain results from. Here are my goals for 2012.

  1. I will quit smoking & drinking and alcohol
  2. I will quit the company of alcoholics and smokers
  3. I’ll publish 500,000 words here or elsewhere
  4. I’ll build a woodshed
  5. I’ll raise 5 new beds in my garden
  6. I’ll cycle 20 miles per day or take an equivalent amount of exercise until I weigh 12½ stone.

Unfortunately I recently started smoking again. Occupy London seemed to be full of smokers. It fitted neatly with the romantic revolutionary air the Occupationists were bent on creating. I found myself constantly in the company of smokers and myself smoking again.

By our society’s standards I don’t have an alcohol problem but clearly I drink too much. I do not seem to be one of these people who can take it in moderation, though I believe they do exist. Once I’ve got a pint in my hand, the cigarette comes next. I didn’t drink at all until I was 26 so I’ve a fair bit of experience of enjoying myself without it at all.

It’s easy to quit the company of smokers, thanks to the smoking ban in public places. They have to go elsewhere. Their numbers are decreasing. I’ve one or two friends who can properly be described as alcoholic. I’ve retained their friendship despite them frequently being destructive of that friendship. This declaration to avoid them is bound to prove controversial. Recognising that hanging out with addicts impresses bad behaviours as the norm is an important step for me to recover my physical, spiritual and mental health.

For many years, I declared I would write this many hundred thousand words or that many and never got close. After many years of blogging in private, on 28th February 2011, I started this blog. Now I’ve written over 330,000 words on it. My self-discipline of publishing a post every day has obliged me to write large. The act of daily composition has improved my writing, I believe. No-one every writes their best to begin with, it has to be worked at. If I’m heading towards the one million word mark by the end of 2012, I should be a much improved writer!

I’ve never built a woodshed before. My garden is full of fallen trees which need a home. Nestled inside a woodshed, the logs can season in their own time. This is a wholesome project which I’m really looking forward to. Expect photographs of progress here.

With the logs cleared out of my garden, there’ll be space for five new raised beds. They will only technically be raised beds. In fact they will be planks raised around areas of double dug earth. It’s a fair bit of physical work, especially with the ground still full of leylandii roots. Completing all five within a year will be quite a challenge.

The last challenge has been set down for me by my lovely wife. After losing three stone this year, I regained much excess weight in my recent time in London. On the year, I’m still down. Dieting is a disaster. As regular readers will know, in 2011 I joined weightwatchers and attained gold membership, which means that I can turn up for free. I only went once more after that achievement. The fact is I never followed their bizarre food value counting system – I just walked or cycled to my heart’s content and ate healthily. Whatever I weigh now, by this time next year I intend to weigh in at 12½ stone, which would be a very healthy weight for a man of my size. I am a big man.

 

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Posted in 2012, Alcohol, Alcoholics, Bicycles, Cycling, Garden, New Year's Resolutions, Occupy London, Occupy London Stock Exchange, Raised Beds, Trees

The best way to start a fight

Posted on 23 December 2011 | Leave a comment

As regular readers will know, after months of politics I have recently turned this blog to practical advice. Today I’m sticking with the hands on approach by explaining why Christmas is so bloody awful and explaining how you can get the best out of what it offers. It offers a fantastic opportunity to have a fight.

The Crucial Factors

The classic ingredients to facilitate a spontaneous eruption of rage are alcohol, stress, bad company and ill feeling. Put these factors together and you will almost certainly witness rage, which is a preliminary stage in most unexpected fights. If you wanted to turn the conditions from those which best suit an old school punching match into something far more dramatic, throw in some sharp implements which people aren’t used to handling. Let’s look put a bit more flesh on the bone of each factor before some it gets hacked off again, in the name of the baby Jesus.

Alcohol

For most of us, alcohol taken in moderation is an okay drug. For all of us, in excess it spells trouble. An old friend of mine once pointed out that it doesn’t make everyone beautiful at closing time, it just lowers your standards. Waking up with the pub’s ugliest pig can be an awkward lesson but losing control of your integrity by going physical in other ways is far more dangerous. Britain is a collection of nations which collectively love to drink but their people go absolutely mad for it in midwinter. It is a depressant. Drinking to excess on a nightly basis when it is dark and cold is a recipe for depression. Depression is rage turned inwards. When drunk, many people can easily be triggered into turning that rage outwards too.

Stress

Many people in Britain live some distance away from their families. Christmas was invented when this was not so. Making long distance journeys in midwinter at the same time as much of the rest of the population creates considerable quantities of stress. The prospect of the pilgrimage ending with those you choose not to live near increases the problem. Familial connections are strong but their unfamiliarity concentrates your guilt about not seeing them so often. The pressure to get along with them all is concentrated into a few days. You cannot afford to relax, to take your time, to get to know one another again. Time is too short.

Bad Company

With everyone arriving under the same burdens, we often make for bad company. The hosts have not had to physically travel but they suffer problems of their own. Being nice to people because it is expected of you, rather than because you are ready to feel warmly towards them, is not nice. The forced ritual of giving and receiving unwanted gifts does not create good relations. When that materialistic merry go round is completed, most people manage to relax. They drop their guard. Many of them cannot stand the sight of each other, which is why they live apart.

Ill Feeling

Ill feeling is a close relative of bad company. Jealousy, resentment, unsettled disputes, bitterness and other negative emotions are all capable of setting the conditions for a fight. It is hard to lose your temper with someone who you are falling in love with! On the other hand, if you suspect that they will take any opportunity to check out your sister whilst neglecting to compliment you, the conditions are set. There’s plenty of pent up ill feeling at Christmas because families have not given themselves time to ventilate their feelings properly. Instead of pondering family disputes frequently, they have saved them up for Christmas.

Christmas Courts

Once conditions are pitch perfect for a punch up or worse, human nature follows suit. You may be lucky and get away relatively unscathed. Perhaps you belong to one of those nice families, which only leaves you in bed at the end of Christmas with a sense of undefined guilt? More than likely there will be upset of some order. Sadly, in many homes, this becomes a fully fledged row. There is the shouting, the insults and the weaponry is at hand, sitting on the table in front of you. Far too many people become so enraged over Christmas dinner that they idly pick up the fork in front of them and stab at the person similarly lunging towards them. Consequently, some courts have to sit on Boxing Day (though they are called the Christmas courts), to deal with the people who have spent Christmas night in a cell. Not wishing to advertise this service, the official website for the magistrates’ courts glibly states, “Some courts may operate on 26, 27 and 28 December and 3 January.”

Avoidance Tactics

There are various avoidance tactics. Many people foolishly choose the most counterproductive – they drink as much alcohol as they can. Others attempt to insist on having a quiet day but this is impossible to manage without getting noticed. Some of us, myself included, prefer to abandon Christmas altogether. This does get noticed but it has the advantage of being straightforward. In recent years I admit my wife has talked me into celebrating Christmas but this year I am back to my default of ignoring it altogether. She is going off and I’ll be treating the day like any other. Increasing numbers of people are employing this tactic. Apparently it is especially popular amongst writers, presumably because they cannot stand to see the same hackneyed stories trotted out every year.

In years gone past I used to go urban cycling on Christmas day. It was great. Even in a cosmopolitan place like Cardiff the streets were very quiet. I’d ride around the places I’d normally be to frightened to enter on two wheels and have them to myself. I gazed upwards at city architecture. Riding around residential districts where every third or fourth house contained screaming matches was particularly enlightening.

Some people choose to help the homeless or people without family at Christmas. Everyone I have ever known who has done this has reported that it was their best Christmas ever. Odd that we all admire those that do this but few of us consider it ourselves. Most of us do nothing of the kind, at any time of year. Loneliness is very different from solitude. Sleeping rough is very different from wild camping. The cliché that all suffering is relative is nonsense spouted by people who have too much pleasure. There is an absolute scale, as anyone who has practiced in law will confirm: the prospect of being killed is worse than losing your liberty; losing your liberty is worse than losing your job; losing social security benefits is worse than losing your job; losing your home is worse than losing all your income. These are the real facts of life. Helping those at the bottom end of the scale is the best Christmas gift you can give. Helping yourself is the worst.

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Posted in Alcohol, Christmas, Christmas Courts, Fighting, Homelessness, Law, Religion

The world’s favourite poison?

Posted on 15 May 2011 | 2 Comments

I was teetotal until I was 26. Considering that I come from Brighton, with all those temptations on my doorstep, this is remarkable. I was strong willed. I got through all the early years of peer pressure without tasting a drop of the world’s favourite poison. The teenage years, university, my early twenties.

Gray's Inn Hall

I first drank in Gray’s Inn, of which I am a member. I was obliged, in order to qualify as a barrister, to eat a certain number of dinners in Gray’s Inn. The whole business was archaic in the extreme, deeply sexist and, quite frankly, offensive. I had to dine 18 times there in a single year in order to be called to the Bar in time for the rest of my legal education. The food was terrible but the alcohol was reasonably good. Whether this is true or not I do not know but at the time I was told that the Inn was exempt on tax on alcohol forever by decree of Queen Elizabeth 1st in gratitude for services rendered in a war against Spain! One evening, raging inside against the pomposity of the institution I was inside, I realised that to stay on course I needed something that would allow me to tolerate the whole charade. I poured a glass from the bottle of port in front of me…

Unfortunately, the rest of my legal education seemed to involve a heavy drinking culture and I got a taste for it. 16 years later, I regard myself as having a drink problem: once I’ve started a beer, I get carried away and cannot stop myself from becoming the most captivating person at the party. Parties need entertaining and most people can’t manage it, so I’m a popular fellow in these situations, with my articulate wit, my edgy nature (I’m not called Scrapper for nothing) and my drop-dead gorgeous good looks. No-one else regards me as having a drink problem. I don’t drink every day. I never drink alone. I don’t display any of the other signs we associate with people who have a drink problem. However, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t drink. Everyone seems to regard only those very badly addicted to alcohol as having a drink problem. In fact, our entire society has a drink problem.

After the recent elections, I have been involved in a fair amount of celebration. It was well deserved. Getting the Greens elected in Brighton & Hove was no accident. It was the result of a lot of hard work by a large number of people. My contribution was modest compared to very many people I could name here. After months of grafting away with our electorate, we made history. It was a heady and emotionally laden moment. After so much work, I was exhausted but did not want to miss out on the fun. The situation was the exact opposite of that evening in Gray’s Inn, yet by this time I was seemingly unable to just be happy without the evil drink. Over the last week I’ve been dwelling much on this comparison.

Last night I met up with Leo Littman and some of his campaign team. It was a gentle evening and I didn’t get drunk – I don’t think any of us were – but once again I did drink. It was good to catch with everyone again and I was pleased that I went along. The trouble is that three pints of beer and a couple of glasses of Pimms ought to have a neurological effect on me. My tolerance for alcohol is simply too high for that amount of poison to affect me. On the long walk home I mused much about the course my health had taken since that night in Gray’s Inn. I photographed the vandalised sign for Balfour Road to remind myself about these darker processes. Once again this morning I have awoken feeling a bit rough, a bit rubbish and generally squalid. I’ve had enough of feeling like this after pretty much every social occasion, so this morning I’m declaring publicly my abandonment of alcohol forever. You’ll have to divert yourselves at parties from now on!

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Posted in Alcohol, Alcoholics, Gray's Inn