I didn’t have to work far through Rosie Millard’s
article in Saturday’s i (The Independent’s weekend paper)
before I came across the hackneyed term ‘party pooper’ in relation to the new
alcohol advice. Because of course you must be boring if, like me, you don’t
drink and worse than boring if you suggest limits on people poisoning
themselves on a regular basis.
Trust me – it’s drinkers who can bore you to tears. Forget
the cherished urban myth. Unbelievably, mind numbingly, tediously, deadly dull
is an evening with someone who needs alcohol to grow a personality. I don’t get paid for my blog but this
teetotaller would be embarrassed to write something as asinine as Ms Millard’s
Saturday article.
Through my 20s 30s and 40s I tired of the adults who
(wile regarding themselves as whacky – good time party people) clearly could not
handle the fact that I could enjoy myself without alcohol.
Now we’ve had the no-safe-level message from the
people who reckon they know but who will probably be telling us something
different next month. Surely the least we could hope for would newspaper
articles a little less – boring - predictable.
The usual reactionary guff was trotted out and not
just by RM – I simply use that as a fine example. You know the type of thing –
you can live on water and lentils then get hit by a bus... Yeah – ok. Tell that
to the staff in A&E on a Saturday night dealing with the body and or social
breakages due to alcohol misuse.
Maybe the article was especially petulant because
one of the target groups for the new information is the chattering class
chugging a bottle a night. Yes – oh my goodness. The humous-eating, jogging, desperately
networking, Waitrose-shopping, Boden-wearing, little-bit-of-work-on-the-face
suburban comfies. Lordy.
Recently a friend told me that her son’s student bar
job entailed him wandering round a club with a tray of vodka PRETENDING to be
drunk and PRETENDING to be having a really really
good time. The aim? To induce other youngsters to acquire the drink habit. This
was his ‘job’. I’ve no doubt that those who are successfully brainwashed will,
like Rosie Millard, regard people like me as ‘party poopers’ if they make it to
middle age still able to enjoy life.
There are lots of things that may reduce your
lifespan. I was surprised to hear that even watching television has been
calculated in life shortening terms. As I haven’t had a T.V in over fifteen years
(why would anyone living outside London pay a licence fee?) I’m unmoved by that
stat either. However, while some things
MAY shorten our lives/damage our health, there are very few that we know WILL.
Regular and/or excessive alcohol being one.
And while I abhor the fashion of fat-shaming
(usually by men aimed at women – no surprise there) I’d be less averse to drunk
shaming. I’d enjoy watching some brave soul lambasting the groups, drunk at
11am on the train en route to their hen/stag dos and discussing, in detail,
their sexual preferences at the top of their boorish, screechy, alcohol amplified
voices.
Yes it’s true that simply living shortens your life.
I do not dwell on the ever changing proclamations from those who appoint
themselves to tell the rest of us how to live. However, I am sick of drinkers
doing that to me. The husband of a friend spent literally years trying to
persuade me to take an alcoholic drink whenever I went to their house. I never
once tried to persuade him not to drink...
I was married to a drinker (not an alcoholic) and
the bad times due to alcohol that could have been good times were countless
(check out my latest book). Am I the
party pooper? I don’t think so. Others may disagree but at least I can remember
the fun I’ve had.