Dear Mr Blair,
I understand that you, like so many of our country men and women, enjoy the odd snifter. Why not after all? It helps one to unwind at the end of the day. And encourages a good night's rest. From time to time I have been known to take a drink myself.
Hopefully unlike yours though, my imbibing has occasionally got out of hand. It got so out of hand at one stage that I experienced a couple of episodes face to face with the purple bunnies. I even found myself on one occasion, counting the antennae on the malevolent insecty things that wriggle out from under the skirting board just as the gin hits the heavy duty 8% electric fizz at 3:55 am. Happily this was some decades ago and I have yet to renew their acquaintance.
More recently, and more positively, in a small way I have helped recovering addicts and alcoholics scrabble out of their own pit of monsters. Ironically this gives me a great buzz. Equally ironically it holds its own hangover potential. I. e. you can feel crap afterwards.
Yes even on the sunny side of Alcohol Street life can be pretty chewy. I recently watched a gifted friend from my adolescence evade the profusely proffered helping hands and lifebelts and drink himself to a very early death. A bundle of laughs for all concerned I can tell you. Not.
So I may claim to have a little knowledge of the stuff. But if I do, have my bibulous adventures earned me any insight? Can I for example explain why Brits drink increasing amounts of increasingly costly liquor like they hope there’ll be no tomorrow? Can I fairy cakes. All I know is that’s what they seem to do.
Once upon a time I had boozing down as a solitary vice. Perhaps that was just my take. For many now it seems that getting slaughtered is, by turns, a liberating experience (i. e. it permits us to do things that we would never have the guts to try sober), a fashion statement, a seriously conspicuous consumption opportunity not to be missed, the new black or scariest of all, the new national sport.
Whatever the goal in this city, the gusto with which young men & women (not to mention the older ones who might have a chance of knowing better) exploit the festive potential for self degradation makes for an impressively depressing spectacle.
The melancholy is undiminished when it takes place in what remains of our inspirational 19th century architecture. Windows through which our forebears dreamed of the stars now stare out in disbelief over their great, great grandsons and daughters puking in the gutter. Until that is, the drinkers really get disinhibited and let it all hang out. How sad, especially over the ‘big weekend’, to see my people brought so low.
So why do they do it? I’m sure it’s nothing to do with the alluring way that alcohol is marketed. Or the glammy image with which boozers are anointed by the press. Ooh we do love a bad girl. Or boy. Don’t we? Just look at the recent case of poor George Best. The latest in an infinite line of sad suffering ‘stars’.
It’s probably nothing to do either with the way parliament trembles at the jobs and investment power wielded by the brewers. Or the punters’ need to be a celeb-for-the-night and sluice away what they see as the comparative mediocrity of their Jo and Jane Soap lives. It’s probably nothing to do either with their personal vulnerabilities or with the need to block out life experiences that are just too tough to handle. Who can say why they are all so desperate to get pissed? Is it just because they can perhaps?
And they sure as hell can. There is no dispute on that point. But what to do about it? I only hope your solution of granting 24/7* access to the hooch succeeds. I am not personally convinced that if you give a bunch of bingers more time to slosh the Day-Glo goo down their raucous necks they will be magically transformed into sophisticated one-glass-of-red-wine-per-day euro-sippers and everything in the clinic garden will be rosy. Not even during the panto sason. In fact it seems to me to be quite a long shot. But it might work. Although may I suggest, probably not after dark in the feral exclusion zones that so many of our urban centres become.
Still not to worry, the increased revenue'll be a sure fire vote winner. Just don’t publish the sum balancing that against the cost to the National Health Service. Or to the local constabulary who will have to keep papering over the cracks.
Surely our police have more important things to do than soaking up drunken violence of an evening? I mean what about the War on Terror? (And while we're about it, what about the War on the Causes of Terror? Thats one that doesn't seem to have found a purchase in you recent rhetoric. But that's a separate rant.) We don’t want any unhinged zealots masterminding the spread of toxic chemicals throughout the land now do we? But hang on a moment. Intoxicated? Toxic? Could there be a link? Mr Blair, you’re not hiding something from us are you?
Apparently you didn’t lose one night's sleep over your decision to let slip the dogs of war in Iraq. I bet unleashing the joy of non stop guzzling on the UK population hasn’t kept you awake either. Such are the qualities of leadership. Sleep sound, Mr Blair. Just like the Iraqi war, I think it very unlikely that the boozing will be happening in your neighbourhood.
Yours sincerely,
Patrick Ellis
PS *I only hope that you think long and hard before you apply a similar rationale to the laws affecting the supply of those other opiates of the masses. God, even religion would be better than that.
© Patrick Ellis 2006
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