Still gradually working my way back into real life. Tomorrow I start work at midday. Midday? Only mad dogs and Englishmen are awake that early. Nobody mentioned that this job-getting business involved sleeping at night and being awake when the clouds turn light grey.
But, needs must. That bottle of Penderyn won’t buy itself, no matter how much I sweet-talk it.
Best get it soon too. I could buy it on the credit card now that I know I’ll have the means to pay it back but… not yet. It turns out the guy who used to have my job was fired for drinking. Not just a little bit, like me, but a lot. A very big lot. Very, very big. How much booze are we talking? In the words of Mr. Don and Mr. George, plenty much booze. At work too. So it would not be a good idea to turn up smelling of whisky right now. Smoky-Drinky is Friday this week so I’ll consider it then. I still don’t like using that credit card, it has teeth, but I’ll make the decision later in the week.
I have therefore restricted myself to a half-bottle of brandy tonight. Just a snifter.
Even if you’re the sort of person who likes a wee sherry at teatime or a small shot at bedtime, you are now in the same classification as me and as my predecessor, Captain Cirrhosis. Why? For the Cheeldren, of course.
A survey by the charity 4Children highlights a ‘silent epidemic’ with a worrying six out of 10 parents claiming their drug or alcohol use had no effect on family life.
This ‘charity’ has absolutely no interest in distinguishing between one half-shandy per night and three bottles of vodka per night.
Seven percent ‘admitted’ drinking every day. I drink every day. I don’t have children to look after but if I did, I’d still drink every day… but much less. It does not matter to the Righteous. You drink one pointlessly small glass of sherry, I drink half a bottle of brandy. We are the same in their eyes, we drink every day.
I have sherry glasses. I should get around to dusting them. But then, there’s no rush because I have no sherry.
All those real ale chaps at CAMRA no doubt drink most, if not every day. Some get plastered, I’ve seen them. Some savour the ale and just have one or two, but they do it every day. You guys are fucked. And sod you, you asked for it. If you want to know how to set up your own places, ask someone else. You banned us smokers and were happy to see the back of us so don’t ask us now for our experience and how we got around your filthy ban.
Mark Bennett, Director of policy at 4Children said the finding back up the belief that many British parents view drinking alcohol ‘as normal as drinking tea”.
I rarely drink tea so I don’t equate the normality of the two at all.
He told the Independent on Sunday: ‘Part of the problem is people don’t realise that they are causing problems by drinking to excess habitually.
Define ‘drinking to excess’. Benny. He doesn’t because in his mind, ‘excess’ is the same as ‘at all’.
‘It could first be one glass, which leads to another. If parents have had a bottle of wine or more, their ability to react to their child, especially a small child, will be impaired.’
Well pour the whole bottle into one big glass and then you’ve only had one. Simple.
Why does one drink automatically lead to another? For me it often does but I am not typical and I have no dependents to look after. If I am flaked out, there is no crying child being ignored and no shitty nappies breeding germs. For those with such responsibilities then tanking down the booze would be a bad idea but it’s their children, their future.
Not my business. Three words there, that have never entered a Righteous head in that combination.
And never will.
Did I miss a post? That’s your second mention of the new job AFAIK but what is it? Cleaner, shelf stacker, something else menial but honourable?
Janitor and cleaner. Or, second assistant sub-menial. I now have to grow long hair and develop a hump so I can be ready to say ‘I would have got away with it, if it weren’t for those pesky kids’.
“A survey by the charity 4Children highlights a ‘silent epidemic’ with a worrying six out of 10 parents claiming their drug or alcohol use had no effect on family life.”
A *WORRYING* six out of ten eh?
I guess if six out of ten said their drinking DID have an effect on their family life then things would be fine? Hey, maybe if everyone drank enough for it to have effects on their family lives then everything would be perfect? Leg, I think we’ve found the perfect campaign for you! Maybe you could get an ASH-LEG* organization started up?
MJM
*ASH-LEG: Alcoholics Savoring High-Liquor Enjoyment Gratifications
I’m not keen to help out all those drinkers who were so glad to see me banned from pubs they never visited – and still don’t. Let them establish their own non-smoky-drinkies.
First they came for those like me, and those who did not speak out because they were not like me, well screw ‘em.
Absofuckinglutely.
I’m rather enjoying it. All my kids are grown up, I don’t drink much, and (over five years down the line with no sign of change) don’t give a fuck about pubs any more.
(Starting to sound a bit like an anti lol).
You ‘n’ me both, Prog. I gave kids the body-swerve completely but rarely drink (Oh the waste – what a perfect parent I would have made! Oh, hang on a moment – there’s the smoking …) My only concern is for my OH – a never-smoker beer-lover – who is the only non-smoking drinker I know who can see what’s on the cards for him and his non-smoking drinker friends, mainly because I’ve drummed it into him from day one of the smoking ban that he was next on the list and he’s gradually begun to see all my predictions beginning to come horribly true. But the rest of them, including pub landlords and bar staff, remain blissfully (wilfully) unaware of the bed they’ve made for themselves (many are still harping on with the old “how can you have such a thing as passive drinking?” line) – so my attitude to them is now very much: “OK then – it’s your funeral. Not mine.”
Passive drinking? LOL! You’ve hit one of my favorite subjects. I post on it all the time: “Wait’ll you get told that you’ve got to go stand back by the dumpster to gulp a few quick glugs of your Don Perignon after your dinner.”
I actually just did a whole post on it a couple of hours ago, but have no idea WHERE at the moment! :> BUT… you can get an idea by seeing my piece on it in the British Medical Journal and you can print it out for those pubsters…
See: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/330/7495/812
Meanwhile I’ll be keeping my eyes open for that posting… had it around here SOMEwhere….
:>
MJM
“Tomorrow I start work at midday. “
Good luck!
Leg, I think you have grounds for a protest here. Mid-day? You mean they are asking you to expose yourself to Ultraviolet Radiation simply because you want to feed yourself and your putative children? Do they think we’re living in medieval times where they could get away with such a demand? How barbaric!! I would advise you to immediately tender your resignation-with-full-pay while the NHS looks into this worker abuse situation. Do NOT take this lying down! (Well, actually, yeah, taking it lying down is fine after you’ve tendered that resignation though.)
- MJM
P.S. If they offer you a night job, just point up at the deadly stars!
More than half of the parents surveyed [...] said they drank alcohol every week, with 7 per cent admitting they tippled every day. But far from being ashamed of their habits…
Wow – we’re practically in Scarlet Letter territory here! (Except, of course, Nathanial Hawthorne’s censorious Puritans could never have thought of a name as nauseating as 4children.)
As for the ”beer goggles’ sessions to be taught in schools’, words fail me; still, it should be fun to watch what happens when Muslim parents start trying try to withdraw their children from the programme on the grounds that it doesn’t apply to them…
Best of luck with the gainful employment!
Clear Fake Charity signs
Their name 4children
brought in because it was the only domain name available
The fact they have a human being who calls himself/herself ‘Director’
Good luck with the bodging and bucket clanking, not that you will need it and for gods sake bit yer tongue at least for the first week.
Some years ago I indulged myself in a time of boredom by going to a counsellor for alcohol and drug use and she had some good words, I thought.
These were along the lines of: If you can function in your chosen method of obtaining a living, and you can choose when you want to have a drink, then you don’t have a problem.
Claude Steiner the follower (and partial corrupter of the intentions, in my opinion, of Eric Berne, but being a left-convinced person I guess that is inevitable and he compromises with untruth too much, probably thinking it a ‘strategic necessity, eg, saying that he disagrees with the AA principles, but agreeing that they are the most effective organisation for now) writes that all addictions are obsessional behaviour and if you can choose sometimes to say ‘yes’ and sometimes to say ‘no’,ie, you are the boss, not the booze, then you are okay.
Perhaps he is a bit more severe than that: http://www.emotional-literacy.com/hea1.htm
Main thing is: Who is the boss?
Pubs? NO way. I havent been in one for over a year and a half and I live in a city where they’re everywhere. Fuck ‘em. Dont miss them at all – yes I am a smoker.
I drink 1 1/2 bottles of red wine every day (Well 12 out of 14). I hold down a full time professional job. I feel great. I’ll very likely die and lose those years where someone else is wiping my arse (or more likely leaving me sitting in my own shit). At least my kids and grandkids will get hold of my money sooner when it can make a difference to them. I woudl love to have a smokey drinkey with you one day LegIron – I reckon we’d have a good old natter.
My doc asked about my drinking, I said maybe 2 1/2 bottles of plonk a night, he said “try and cut it down to two then…”, top class bloke!