Pig Sty Avenue

This news "story", put out by the SNP Scottish Government, is giving me a bad head, nausea, depression and a general sensitivity to light. Because, everyone drinking FORTY SIX bottles of VODKA sounds like a lot. Until you break it down. That's less than a bottle a week, which is a couple of stiff V&Ts per evening. Probably more than your po-faced doctor would order, and it wouldn't leave you safe to drive, but it's not going to have you shitting on the carpet, and then rolling around in it, exactly. I usually get a bit of shopping at Sainsbury's when I go there to buy my paper of a morning. I usually get the makings of our dinner there, but not a bottle of wine to go with it, oh no, because that's not for sale until after 10am, 12.30pm on Sundays. Meanwhile in Dockhead St, the pubs are open at 9am. And I used to have a custom of getting a spiced rum (pay £1 extra for the double) whenever I passed through Glasgow Central Station, but that to...

I was watching the news today, Dubya talking to the press with first Olmert and then Abbas, and I thought "Has he maybe had a few drinks today?" I've been a drinker and around drinkers all my life, so I can read the signs: a slightly excessive bonhomie, a deliberate way with speech. I'd genuinely not like to see any drunk fall off the wagon. I'm only saying...

...is what scientists had when asked to say what would be a safe amount of alcohol to put by in a week, and they came up with the good-old "21 units of alcohol for men and 14 for women, first introduced in 1987." Ha! In other words, they were just making it up. Which, of course, all boozers always suspected. Hands up: how many otherwise honest people have consistently lied to their doctor over the years about how much they soak up of a weekend? It's an aspect of managing our lives which we've given over to people in authority. Any boozer knows when they've drunk too much because the next day they feel like shit and/or their nearest and dearest isn't speaking to them. And if that's happening to you regularly, then you've got a problem. You don't really need a numpty in authority to tell you. Cheers!

Scandalous behaviour!