1 day ago
Friday, 20 February 2009
CAMRA’s Roger Protz strops over Oz and James
Oh dear. King CAMRA and former Swoppie Roger Protz, has gone a bit Daily Mail.
For in his latest blog post all the toys have departed the CAMRA pram. And the reason? Oz Clarke and James May’s continued failure to talk about his organisation on their contrived, hideously overstretched and somehow one-dimensional exploration tour of Britain’s booze culture.
Yes, the programme is frustrating with its endless edit-suite padding and caricatured voice-overs from the all-knowing smugster versus the hairest dolt in town. It has also lasted longer than the Hundred Year’s War and yet has somehow surfed along the details like an un-briefed minister unwittingly rolled into Paxman’s thousand-yard stare.
The tone of the piece is grating but to write “I repeat, Camra is the story” is as blinkered as it is clumsy. Oz and James Drink Britain reached around 3 million possibly Non-Discerning Drinkers for its first and second episodes, only two million less than the inauguration of than the 44th president of the old colonies did. Surely that does the drink and the organisation some good? Especially since as Rog's opening paragraph admits most people have heard of CAMRA, then surely the problem isn't awareness but presentation? Wouldn't it be better to look like professional inclusive organisation that can take a ribbing, not a petulant prissy and fragile interest group?
Could we not think in widescreen for a moment, and not 4:3?
Yes the programme is two buffoons buffering and bickering around Blightly in a big car, it’s not the Ascent Of Man with Doctor Jacob Bronowski, and the music is considerably more jaunty. But people watch it. Millions of people watch it – although a good number of those will be beer bloggers. But never mind the quality, feel the coverage – for real ale and ultimately for CAMRA and all of us.
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Three reasons to drink to the recession
Stop jabbing at your jugular and put down that jagged strip of bean tin. Choke up that gut load of aspirin, Relentless and shame. Clamber carefully off that rickety chair and take you neck out of the shoelace noose. Come on, stop all that and listen here instead:
The recession isn’t that bad.
Go on admit it. Just because our economy has reached parity with Zimbabwe’s is no reason for mass panic.
And anyway your Ikea light fitting wouldn’t have stood up to having your trans-fat bloated corpse dangling from it. When they did find your body, rendered unidentifiable by the nibbling of local cats, it’s likely to be covered by a plasterboard shroud and a small pile of the wrong screws for the job.
Because there are really are three reasons why the recession will actually be good for drinking and drinkers – and not just because everyone who gets sacked immediately heads to the pub to get so mind bendingly skullfudged that they are halfway to work the next morning before they’ve sobered up enough to remember that the faceless corporation to which they’ve dedicated two-thirds of their life considered them to have less worth than a urinal cake - and a slightly worse pension.
Look at the entirely fabricated evidence…
Bankers + Bonuses = Brewers
Now you might find it hard to squeeze any sadwater out of your eyes when you see pinstripe parasites being locked out of their Norman Foster Associates tower of glass and idolatry, however once these shills drift off into the shires they’ll need something else to do. And what do men with money do in the sticks? Exactly right, they pour their vast state-subsidised bonuses into opening new breweries. There they can make exciting beers with exciting pump clips and exciting names such as Libor Pains, The Alan Stanford Prison Experiment, New-Facile Brown Ale and Darling Black Label.
Saloon With A View
With bricks and mortar now offering the same rigidity and reliability as chocolate teapots and marzipan dildos, surely pubs will be safe from developers? Since mortgages are now confined to the history books along with permanent jobs and the joyless smiles of ITV regional presenters, no longer will anyone want to turn your humble local into sixty self-contained rat-holes.
Bad Mad Men
The greatest disparity between real ale and the test tube swill so beloved by the bovine herds wasn’t always in taste – it was in advertising. So while Stella spent millions attempting to bridge the canyon of cognitive dissonance between Jean de Florette and a Saturday in casualty, real ale’s ad budget stretched to a XL T-shirt made skin-tight over a XXXL stomach. Now with ad spend collapsing like a Windies bowling crease, the difference is down to a few billion. Okay so the playing field might not be levelled but it is slightly less vertical.
Now, how much damage can a desk fan do to your face?
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
Bristol Pub Review: The Star & Dove
The Star & Dove
Totterdown
Bristol
www.thestaranddove.co.uk
It has to be the easiest bit of selling ever performed - that second pint. You are already through the pub door, you’re already warm, and you’re already made yourself comfortable. More importantly you’ve already got foam on your lip and there is no anecdote and no tale worth the telling that can ever be fully explained in the time it takes to sink a solitary pint.
No act of silver-tongued salesmanship is required. You are a large, mildly intoxicated fish in a particularly beery barrel. Except at the Star & Dove in Bristol has never managed to sell me that second beer - despite two separate visits.
Because twice we’ve visited this recently re-fitted festival of artfully-rickety furniture and pre-scuffed paintwork. We’ve even eaten well there too. And from real plates too, not just licking the cheesy and oniony shards from the shiny side of a packet of Golden Wonder. And twice we have left without having a second pint.
We’ve tried though. Both times we’ve been denied because they’ve run out of beer – all beers. No, it was neither too late nor too early, both times were around eight o’clock on a Monday and a Wednesday respectively.
All Gastro, No Pub
But it isn’t just the three handpumps that seem to regularly run dry in this sizeable but eternally empty gastropub. On our first visit as we finished our well looked after pints of Bath Ale’s Spa, we watched another customer attempt to buy a pint of ale in a scene distressingly reminiscent of Month Python’s Cheese Shop routine.
First he ordered a Tribute, then a BOB and then a Spa. ‘All off’ muttered the starched halibut of a waiter drafted in from the upstairs restaurant. So the customer glanced along the bar and opted for an Amstel. ‘Nope’. Foster's? He asked more in desperation than desire but again an answer was shrugged in his direction – ‘only the Extra Cold’.
It was a moment of pure genius. Well, it would have been except that the Guinness had a glass over the handle too. And it wasn’t even a one off because on the previous visit all three ales, two lagers, both ciders and black stuff had been unavailable.
No beer, not much lager and an intermittent cider? You might wonder what kind of pub this is? The answer can only be that it is a very confused one because seemingly this otherwise promising large local is having a bit of a crisis.
The problem seems to be that as gastro element of the pub has drawn the attention and most of the funds, and so the pub part has suffered. But while running a pub on beer alone must be difficult - except in a few wonderful cases - but running a pub solely on food? Well there is a word for that - it’s a restaurant.
Scrapping The Barrel
The resulting establishment seems to be a bit of a basketcase, attempting to appeal to any demographic that might be wandering past. So on Monday there is Thai food, Tuesday is jazz night and on Wednesday the menu changes again to steaks. Add in the quiz evening, cinema night, and the Sunday roast and it is no wonder that the staff forget about the day to day items such as drink.
So perhaps it is no surprise that the barman seemed confused and twitchy, too distracted to remember any of the items on our three-item-long order. And that ten pounds plus ten pounds does not equal thirty pounds.
The Right Staff
As were waited sipping our sole beer, orders were lost, plates of food were taken from room to room in search of customers in a barely quarter full pub. No one knew if the restaurant upstairs was open or closed leaving the waiters ignoring the customers as they faffed with rotas.
But it doesn’t need to be like this. Beer and food can be fused successfully as The King William in Bath proves both wonderfully. There the drinkers and diners sit happily alongside each other, even though space is far smaller. The outward simplicity of the menu is complimented by the bold choice of local beers. There is no safe selection of goldens there, instead of the five handpumps, one or two are often dedicated to darks or tastebud testers instead of frothy non-entities.
It is a balance that the owners, who have clearly invested a great deal of time and money in the place, need to also understand. Unless that happens the Star And Dove seems little more than a Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmare’s waiting to happen. At least until it is taken over, and hopefully that is at least one sale that they can manage to make.
Totterdown
Bristol
www.thestaranddove.co.uk
It has to be the easiest bit of selling ever performed - that second pint. You are already through the pub door, you’re already warm, and you’re already made yourself comfortable. More importantly you’ve already got foam on your lip and there is no anecdote and no tale worth the telling that can ever be fully explained in the time it takes to sink a solitary pint.
No act of silver-tongued salesmanship is required. You are a large, mildly intoxicated fish in a particularly beery barrel. Except at the Star & Dove in Bristol has never managed to sell me that second beer - despite two separate visits.
Because twice we’ve visited this recently re-fitted festival of artfully-rickety furniture and pre-scuffed paintwork. We’ve even eaten well there too. And from real plates too, not just licking the cheesy and oniony shards from the shiny side of a packet of Golden Wonder. And twice we have left without having a second pint.
We’ve tried though. Both times we’ve been denied because they’ve run out of beer – all beers. No, it was neither too late nor too early, both times were around eight o’clock on a Monday and a Wednesday respectively.
All Gastro, No Pub
But it isn’t just the three handpumps that seem to regularly run dry in this sizeable but eternally empty gastropub. On our first visit as we finished our well looked after pints of Bath Ale’s Spa, we watched another customer attempt to buy a pint of ale in a scene distressingly reminiscent of Month Python’s Cheese Shop routine.
First he ordered a Tribute, then a BOB and then a Spa. ‘All off’ muttered the starched halibut of a waiter drafted in from the upstairs restaurant. So the customer glanced along the bar and opted for an Amstel. ‘Nope’. Foster's? He asked more in desperation than desire but again an answer was shrugged in his direction – ‘only the Extra Cold’.
It was a moment of pure genius. Well, it would have been except that the Guinness had a glass over the handle too. And it wasn’t even a one off because on the previous visit all three ales, two lagers, both ciders and black stuff had been unavailable.
No beer, not much lager and an intermittent cider? You might wonder what kind of pub this is? The answer can only be that it is a very confused one because seemingly this otherwise promising large local is having a bit of a crisis.
The problem seems to be that as gastro element of the pub has drawn the attention and most of the funds, and so the pub part has suffered. But while running a pub on beer alone must be difficult - except in a few wonderful cases - but running a pub solely on food? Well there is a word for that - it’s a restaurant.
Scrapping The Barrel
The resulting establishment seems to be a bit of a basketcase, attempting to appeal to any demographic that might be wandering past. So on Monday there is Thai food, Tuesday is jazz night and on Wednesday the menu changes again to steaks. Add in the quiz evening, cinema night, and the Sunday roast and it is no wonder that the staff forget about the day to day items such as drink.
So perhaps it is no surprise that the barman seemed confused and twitchy, too distracted to remember any of the items on our three-item-long order. And that ten pounds plus ten pounds does not equal thirty pounds.
The Right Staff
As were waited sipping our sole beer, orders were lost, plates of food were taken from room to room in search of customers in a barely quarter full pub. No one knew if the restaurant upstairs was open or closed leaving the waiters ignoring the customers as they faffed with rotas.
But it doesn’t need to be like this. Beer and food can be fused successfully as The King William in Bath proves both wonderfully. There the drinkers and diners sit happily alongside each other, even though space is far smaller. The outward simplicity of the menu is complimented by the bold choice of local beers. There is no safe selection of goldens there, instead of the five handpumps, one or two are often dedicated to darks or tastebud testers instead of frothy non-entities.
It is a balance that the owners, who have clearly invested a great deal of time and money in the place, need to also understand. Unless that happens the Star And Dove seems little more than a Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmare’s waiting to happen. At least until it is taken over, and hopefully that is at least one sale that they can manage to make.
Thursday, 15 January 2009
Oz And Gluck: A Pint Of Bitterness
Thanks to the iPlayer making the previously eminently missable now fast forwardable I’ve finally caught up with BBC 2’s Oz And James’ Great Free Booze Up. And well, yes, it is mild enough to be inoffensive, mildly education and mildly dull.
The priggish Oz Clarke, and part-time Stirling Moss look-alike, clearly knows rather a lot about booze while James May’s blitherings can amuse. In fact with their clashing voice-overs it is a little bit like a sedate version of Peep Show – but only if Jez and Mark had enjoyed a good private education, and had less disturbing sexual habits. Or at least nothing that can be tried in a caravan.
It’s a light, gentle, warming piece of work - unlike this pitiful cockery from Malcolm Gluck, a man with so steeped in print that he probably squirts ink if accidentally surprised.
But now Gluck has hit the web and he is angry. No tell a lie for rhetorical effect - (why not he does) he’s actually desperate, servicing-the-needs-of-dockers-for-food desperate.
Otherwise why would a once respected copy-monkey even type such wrist-tossed drivel as: “Well, beer is only drunk by losers and sadsacks, unsexy people who care nothing for their minds or their bodies.”
It’s obviously lazy, horribly lazy work. The kind of drivel that would shame a Tourette sufferer's Twitter feed. It is also stupidly short-term hit-garnering of the worst kind, as pathetic as me writing NUDE KITTEN BRITNEY LESBIAN KAKA SEX OBAMA MYSPACE.
The Guardian should really know better, and so should I. NUDE KITTEN BRITNEY LESBIAN KAKA SEX OBAMA MYSPACE should be at the top of the page and include today's celeb stiff-fest RICARDO MONTALBAN and PATRICK PRISONER MCGOOHAN.
Of course rising to his petty bait would be silly, especially if it gets added to his Comments list. Responding would be dignifying his unwarranted poking of the beery beast. Instead it is far better just to leave him to his gutter-dwelling without mentioning that his reference are out of date, his prose is leaden and that is face looks eerily like the weird curly-haired boy who once valued antiques on Wogan and is now a woman.
Just because one wine critic is doing well from himself eh Malcolm?
The priggish Oz Clarke, and part-time Stirling Moss look-alike, clearly knows rather a lot about booze while James May’s blitherings can amuse. In fact with their clashing voice-overs it is a little bit like a sedate version of Peep Show – but only if Jez and Mark had enjoyed a good private education, and had less disturbing sexual habits. Or at least nothing that can be tried in a caravan.
It’s a light, gentle, warming piece of work - unlike this pitiful cockery from Malcolm Gluck, a man with so steeped in print that he probably squirts ink if accidentally surprised.
But now Gluck has hit the web and he is angry. No tell a lie for rhetorical effect - (why not he does) he’s actually desperate, servicing-the-needs-of-dockers-for-food desperate.
Otherwise why would a once respected copy-monkey even type such wrist-tossed drivel as: “Well, beer is only drunk by losers and sadsacks, unsexy people who care nothing for their minds or their bodies.”
It’s obviously lazy, horribly lazy work. The kind of drivel that would shame a Tourette sufferer's Twitter feed. It is also stupidly short-term hit-garnering of the worst kind, as pathetic as me writing NUDE KITTEN BRITNEY LESBIAN KAKA SEX OBAMA MYSPACE.
The Guardian should really know better, and so should I. NUDE KITTEN BRITNEY LESBIAN KAKA SEX OBAMA MYSPACE should be at the top of the page and include today's celeb stiff-fest RICARDO MONTALBAN and PATRICK PRISONER MCGOOHAN.
Of course rising to his petty bait would be silly, especially if it gets added to his Comments list. Responding would be dignifying his unwarranted poking of the beery beast. Instead it is far better just to leave him to his gutter-dwelling without mentioning that his reference are out of date, his prose is leaden and that is face looks eerily like the weird curly-haired boy who once valued antiques on Wogan and is now a woman.
Just because one wine critic is doing well from himself eh Malcolm?
Thursday, 8 January 2009
Beer Review: Born In A Barn
Draught
Art Brew
6.0%
www.artbrew.co.uk
The decorations are down, the nation is back at work (until their P45s arrive) and the BBC have stopped repeating the festive Doctor Who on a daily basis. Yes, Christmas is finally over.
And to fully embrace the ending of over-eating, over-heating and endless relatives staying over, you need fresh zesty beer that pulls you into the New Year with vim, vigour and a hoppy smack in the chops. Except that it is minus ten outside and even the once predictable pavement is as treacherous as any of Bond's bedfellows.
So actually what you need is a beer that warms, that comforts, that contains enough booze to make every flat slab of un-impeding tarmac feel like an ice-rink. You need a Born In A Barn.
This beer tastes of Christmas, with all the trimmings. There seems to be a bit of everything in this drink, almost as if the brewer brushed out his luxuriant beard after Christmas dinner straight into the mash tun.
The nose is distinctly acidic, not the pickled onion aroma of an off-pint, but a pungent hint towards what lies beneath the loose, pale head. The taste though is warming, the perfect simulacra of port and brandy together. It fuses the soft fruit and raisin flavours of the fortified wine but the alcoholic kick of the spirit. It’s a heady, giddy, heart-warming combination and one of the best of the new brews from this fledgling brewer.
It's just a shame that we are probably going to have to wait another year for another pint.
Friday, 2 January 2009
Clutching At Straw
Welcome to a whole new year, the same as the old year. Welcome to another 364 days when the humble pint of beer can be demonised as the greatest threat to our civilisation since Adolf left the army, little Osama decided against joining dad’s construction business and women/blacks/the poor were allowed the vote.
So two days of 2009 have gone and already J.D. Wetherspoon’s decision to cut beer prices is being hailed as a Licence To Binge by those indignation-hawkers at The Daily Mail. Now I’m not getting involved in the politics behind beer. That isn’t why I periodically mash my face into this keyboard and let the spellchecker pick the bones out. Others can fire-hose opprobrium around, but I just like beer. Anyway I’m sure that you have your own opinions and they are no doubt less fabricated from ill-conceived mouthguff than mine.
But we need to look to the future for beer. We must - primarily so we can get there before a junior minister sees fit to flop his swollen credentials onto the dispatch box in an attempt to sate an imagined demographic that only really consists of Melanie Phillips and her bubonic afterbirth.
But I have a nifty plan. If we create our own headline-grabbing programme of anti-booze measures we can discredit any future governments plans. After all anything and anyone that appears on this blog is instantly discredited.
So we must create a raft of measures and thus render them all laughable. They must also be radical, they must be draconian too because any Speakers’ Corner driveller can call for curfews or increasing the minimum drinking age to 21.
In fact, someone somewhere on a forum is probably right now advocating the return of National Service for anyone who has ever consumed more than a small gin in a 24-hour period. It might be fun though. After all watching the CAMRA membership run over an assault course would at least be a cheap laugh and somehow more dignfied than some TV programmes.
Go Guantanmo On Their Arses
The Government have already nabbed these high-visibility orange jumpsuits for their Community Payback idiocy but that shouldn’t stop us. Originality is no bar is it Jack?
To further distance the deviants who like the odd glass of ginger wine from the rest of decent, honest, puritan, white society, anyone planning a night out or even a swift pint on the walk home should be forced to wear one of these orange jumpsuit. Not only will it have safety benefits as drivers will know to expect their toddleresque lurching on the way home but now all you need to do is pop granddad into his day-glow romper outfit before he has a Harvey’s Bristol Cream and the rest of humanity will know not to listen to his deranged and racist ‘reckonings’ anymore.
Pedestrian Breathalyser
Roads are a dangerous place to be boozed-up, sure, but what about pavements? Have you ever had to walk too near a crumpled prole or a gutter-hobbit because of their unreasoned foot-stumbling? All we need to do is equip every copper - and borderline authority figure such as teachers/masons/T.A. members- with cuffs, a breathalyser and some weapons-grade sarcasm. Combined with some comprehensive SUS laws, we could even dress it up as part of the fight against knife crime, and the GWAT. Or just introduce it into infant schools from Monday.
Warnings On Booze
Printed cigarette warnings have clearly proven a vast success; there isn’t any evidence to prove this – except that it is a fact. So logically beer warnings must use the same technique of stark slogans and big print. No, in fact the font must be bigger, bolder and the words somehow less nuanced - because remember these people might be drunk. Surely the simple sloganeering of: “No!”, “Bad” and the Alice in Wonderland-themed “Don’t Drink Me” would suffice?
To truly save the youth from the demonic drink perhaps we must take this whole principle further and attempt to shatter the traditional link between alcohol and fun. So from now on all booze should be advertised under the slogan "Party with Shami Chakrabarti”. All we need to do is let Liberty's misery in mascara glower her way through any advert for alcohol and even the delightful Old Purple Tin won’t taste so sweet.
Failing that one in every twenty bottles of Budweiser contains a surprise. Instead of ricey-goodness, each special bottle would fire steel bolts from high-pressure rams up into the roof of the mouth piercing the brain and performing an instant Budotomoy.
Alcoholic-proof bottle caps
Clearly a major problem with these unruly booze-hounds isn't just the quantity of hooch consumed, it is the timing. So by simply adding alcoholic-proof bottle caps to the top of any bottle of spirits, the hours that the grog can be consumed can be cut. Much like the childproof caps on pills, these simple devices would click annoyingly until the next Centrally Mandated Drinking Hour sounds when they would be able to unleash their intoxicating contents.
Start Your Two Minutes Of Hate
Can you do better? Of course you can, you aren’t Jacqui Smith. But why not pretend to take a hammer to the Statue Of Lady Justice yourself with your own short-term idiocy designed to appeal to Simon Heffer and his hellspawn. Type them here. Go on, it’s that or talk to your co-workers.
So two days of 2009 have gone and already J.D. Wetherspoon’s decision to cut beer prices is being hailed as a Licence To Binge by those indignation-hawkers at The Daily Mail. Now I’m not getting involved in the politics behind beer. That isn’t why I periodically mash my face into this keyboard and let the spellchecker pick the bones out. Others can fire-hose opprobrium around, but I just like beer. Anyway I’m sure that you have your own opinions and they are no doubt less fabricated from ill-conceived mouthguff than mine.
But we need to look to the future for beer. We must - primarily so we can get there before a junior minister sees fit to flop his swollen credentials onto the dispatch box in an attempt to sate an imagined demographic that only really consists of Melanie Phillips and her bubonic afterbirth.
But I have a nifty plan. If we create our own headline-grabbing programme of anti-booze measures we can discredit any future governments plans. After all anything and anyone that appears on this blog is instantly discredited.
So we must create a raft of measures and thus render them all laughable. They must also be radical, they must be draconian too because any Speakers’ Corner driveller can call for curfews or increasing the minimum drinking age to 21.
In fact, someone somewhere on a forum is probably right now advocating the return of National Service for anyone who has ever consumed more than a small gin in a 24-hour period. It might be fun though. After all watching the CAMRA membership run over an assault course would at least be a cheap laugh and somehow more dignfied than some TV programmes.
Go Guantanmo On Their Arses
The Government have already nabbed these high-visibility orange jumpsuits for their Community Payback idiocy but that shouldn’t stop us. Originality is no bar is it Jack?
To further distance the deviants who like the odd glass of ginger wine from the rest of decent, honest, puritan, white society, anyone planning a night out or even a swift pint on the walk home should be forced to wear one of these orange jumpsuit. Not only will it have safety benefits as drivers will know to expect their toddleresque lurching on the way home but now all you need to do is pop granddad into his day-glow romper outfit before he has a Harvey’s Bristol Cream and the rest of humanity will know not to listen to his deranged and racist ‘reckonings’ anymore.
Pedestrian Breathalyser
Roads are a dangerous place to be boozed-up, sure, but what about pavements? Have you ever had to walk too near a crumpled prole or a gutter-hobbit because of their unreasoned foot-stumbling? All we need to do is equip every copper - and borderline authority figure such as teachers/masons/T.A. members- with cuffs, a breathalyser and some weapons-grade sarcasm. Combined with some comprehensive SUS laws, we could even dress it up as part of the fight against knife crime, and the GWAT. Or just introduce it into infant schools from Monday.
Warnings On Booze
Printed cigarette warnings have clearly proven a vast success; there isn’t any evidence to prove this – except that it is a fact. So logically beer warnings must use the same technique of stark slogans and big print. No, in fact the font must be bigger, bolder and the words somehow less nuanced - because remember these people might be drunk. Surely the simple sloganeering of: “No!”, “Bad” and the Alice in Wonderland-themed “Don’t Drink Me” would suffice?
To truly save the youth from the demonic drink perhaps we must take this whole principle further and attempt to shatter the traditional link between alcohol and fun. So from now on all booze should be advertised under the slogan "Party with Shami Chakrabarti”. All we need to do is let Liberty's misery in mascara glower her way through any advert for alcohol and even the delightful Old Purple Tin won’t taste so sweet.
Failing that one in every twenty bottles of Budweiser contains a surprise. Instead of ricey-goodness, each special bottle would fire steel bolts from high-pressure rams up into the roof of the mouth piercing the brain and performing an instant Budotomoy.
Alcoholic-proof bottle caps
Clearly a major problem with these unruly booze-hounds isn't just the quantity of hooch consumed, it is the timing. So by simply adding alcoholic-proof bottle caps to the top of any bottle of spirits, the hours that the grog can be consumed can be cut. Much like the childproof caps on pills, these simple devices would click annoyingly until the next Centrally Mandated Drinking Hour sounds when they would be able to unleash their intoxicating contents.
Start Your Two Minutes Of Hate
Can you do better? Of course you can, you aren’t Jacqui Smith. But why not pretend to take a hammer to the Statue Of Lady Justice yourself with your own short-term idiocy designed to appeal to Simon Heffer and his hellspawn. Type them here. Go on, it’s that or talk to your co-workers.
Wednesday, 31 December 2008
January - Time To Retox
Welcome to the wagging finger season. It is that time of year when the nation’s journalists, feeling tired and insecure on every level, decide that that rest of the country must be suffering similar internal ructions. And so it is their moral duty to shake a judgemental finger at them - before knocking off early.
So they find the most tedious paper-skinned living-forever-through-denial freelancer to write a happy-clappy health piece about detoxing. It’s pure Googlefiction of course, but still every part of it is backed up by ersatz quacks who at least managed to fill in their Response Source form and so is clearly an expert in something.
Of course they advocate taking charcoal/dried cat anuses/rose-flavoured magical spring-water to cleanse your blood/colon/soul. It doesn’t matter what is in these potions and lotions though because it’s all-natural and nothing natural ever hurt anyone, ever. And that is a fact.
Along with keeping Ben Goldacre in columns for another year, they also always want you to stop drinking, at all, for a whole month, regardless of such inconvenient truths as the Reinheitsgebot and the general purity of most alcohol. But they can be very insistent, very repetitive and use a very big font. So here are five reasons why you should carry on drinking right throughout January and beyond:
January Is The Coolest Month
January is the best time of the year to go to the pub. Those lovely sweet/smoky dark beers are in, the fire is lit and since the sun never actually comes up there is nothing to see outside the window – except the inexorable decline of capitalism.
Silence With Golden
January is the quietest time of the year to go to the pub. Since the rest of humanity is wracked with Sunday supplement-driven self-flagellation, they aren’t spoiling your drinking time with their voices/faces/jostling. You’ve got a pint of Entire Stout, they’ve got a litre of something gloopy sculpted from wheatgrass, and a hollow feeling.
Also the amateur drinkers who ruined the whole of December with their tottering, bragging and eruptive vomiting have also gone back to their PCs and padded work cells for another twelve months - or three months in the case of most of the financial institutions who think that they can dodge the world’s ire simply by delaying their parties till March.
Brevity Is Best
February is only 28 days long. If you really want to punish yourself, you know it makes sense.
Fiends Like These
If it is your friends who say you drink too much, where else could it be easy to make new friends than a pub?
Who's Got A Problem?
Who actually needs a month off alcohol? Alcoholics is who. So if you need a month off booze, it’s because you’ve got a problem and if you don’t, you don’t. Simple, so long as you don’t question the logic and just get your round in.
So they find the most tedious paper-skinned living-forever-through-denial freelancer to write a happy-clappy health piece about detoxing. It’s pure Googlefiction of course, but still every part of it is backed up by ersatz quacks who at least managed to fill in their Response Source form and so is clearly an expert in something.
Of course they advocate taking charcoal/dried cat anuses/rose-flavoured magical spring-water to cleanse your blood/colon/soul. It doesn’t matter what is in these potions and lotions though because it’s all-natural and nothing natural ever hurt anyone, ever. And that is a fact.
Along with keeping Ben Goldacre in columns for another year, they also always want you to stop drinking, at all, for a whole month, regardless of such inconvenient truths as the Reinheitsgebot and the general purity of most alcohol. But they can be very insistent, very repetitive and use a very big font. So here are five reasons why you should carry on drinking right throughout January and beyond:
January Is The Coolest Month
January is the best time of the year to go to the pub. Those lovely sweet/smoky dark beers are in, the fire is lit and since the sun never actually comes up there is nothing to see outside the window – except the inexorable decline of capitalism.
Silence With Golden
January is the quietest time of the year to go to the pub. Since the rest of humanity is wracked with Sunday supplement-driven self-flagellation, they aren’t spoiling your drinking time with their voices/faces/jostling. You’ve got a pint of Entire Stout, they’ve got a litre of something gloopy sculpted from wheatgrass, and a hollow feeling.
Also the amateur drinkers who ruined the whole of December with their tottering, bragging and eruptive vomiting have also gone back to their PCs and padded work cells for another twelve months - or three months in the case of most of the financial institutions who think that they can dodge the world’s ire simply by delaying their parties till March.
Brevity Is Best
February is only 28 days long. If you really want to punish yourself, you know it makes sense.
Fiends Like These
If it is your friends who say you drink too much, where else could it be easy to make new friends than a pub?
Who's Got A Problem?
Who actually needs a month off alcohol? Alcoholics is who. So if you need a month off booze, it’s because you’ve got a problem and if you don’t, you don’t. Simple, so long as you don’t question the logic and just get your round in.
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