Beast of the Bottle

 For the boys and girls heading off to Benidorm this weekend..... Stay Safe and look after one another.

I like alcohol.... No, really I do. Although my attitude towards drink is a lot more mature now, don't get me wrong I probably drink everyday(I don't know why I wrote 'probably' in that statement) but I limit my intake to a couple of cans of bitter or a couple of glasses of a carefully chosen Rioja or Chianti. Occasionally I will partake in a fine brandy or a single malt.... or even a glass or two of my currently favoured tipple, Bourbon, especially Woodford Reserve, to experience that is truly to imbibe the nectar of the Gods. Saying all of this makes it sound like I am a chronic drunkard, a sot, but the truth is, I rarely drink to excess nowadays being all grown up and all..... however this hasn't always been the case, my long term relationship with the Demon Drink has been a rocky one to say the least. It has seen me breakfasting in a cell on more than one occasion, it has resulted in me

appearing in courts, both civil and military, facing some pretty hefty fines or a custodial visit to one of the Queen's big houses . Whilst under the influence I have awoken in hospital having a stab wound stitched without the aid of an anaesthetic and I have been stranded in foreign lands long after my ship had sailed over the horizon. On another occasion, my drunken antics resulted in my friend being hung by the neck, I might add that he survived but was in hospital for a week with hypothermia after being plucked from the icy waters of the South Atlantic. So as you can see, over the years our relationship has certainly had it's ups and downs. I have done other things that I am not very proud of and it was all down to the Demon Drink, the Beast of the bottle.

My main tipple and partner in this long term relationship is and always has been bitter, lager was the drink of old men and women where I grew up. When I started courting alcohol, pubs had only three pumps on the bar, bitter, lager and mild and there was one choice of each, usually all from the same brewery, the only bottles were, Guinness, brown ale and stout for the hardened old widows, the battleaxes of the Northern Bars and working men's clubs. There was no vast selection of Continental or exotic lagers, there were no cocktails or shots from a test tube, there were no plastic plants, florescent lighting, fruit machines, quiz's or karaoke.... there was only beer and good conversation.

As I matured to an age where it was actually legal for me to drink and I started to enjoy the company (and tales) of salty old sea dogs, old Matelots who had spent their whole adult lives sailing to the far corners of the globe and had experienced more adventures than Captain Jack Sparrow himself and whilst I hung on every word of every relayed adventure(they all had a great skill for story telling), we would finish each night with a few rounds of Matelots Marmite, love it or hate it, Dark Navy Rum was the drink of our mariner forefathers and a vital ingredient to the staple diet of  'Men of the Sea'.... no mixers though, they were the folly of Landlubbers and there would be an almighty roar and banging of tables if the bar wench even waved the rum anywhere near the ice bucket. These were happy care free days, courting and dating the Demon, taming the beast... but the Beast was a thief, it would steal evenings away from me, then days and even whole weekends would go astray leaving no recollection as to their whereabouts. The strange thing about Matelots Marmite is that I used to drink a lot of the stuff, large ones, neaters, no ice, but as soon as I became a civvie, I couldn't stomach it any longer, it started to make me violently sick.... Psychosomatic????

Even as the Top Brass sat around highly polished tables in Naval Headquarters to discuss and debate the delicate subject of alcohol abuse within the Royal Navy, each rating over the age of eighteen gratefully received his daily issue of beer, three cans per day per man. Gone were the days of the Rum Issue(unfortunately) but at least the Admiralty had seen sense to try and ween sailors off their daily issue slowly by replacing the rum with beer. Of course some wouldn't drink theirs..... not me, I wouldn't allow a little thing like being tossed about like a Caesar salad in a force twelve gale with a fifty foot swell to come between me and my nightly visit to the mess fridge.... 'More for those that do' was the motto by which I lived.

All of this was long before that anti-social phrase 'Binge Drinking' came to the attention of the public... but sailors had been binge drinking for centuries. As soon as their ship hit land, the crew would head for the nearest tavern outside the dockyard gates for a warm up session before painting the town red, we've all heard the phrase 'drunken sailor' or 'Jolly Jack Tar', this was just Olde English for binge drinker, I suppose  because it wasn't vilified on a daily basis by the media of the day(scrolls nailed to a post) drunken sailors were looked upon with a sort of affection and leniency because of the 'perceived' hardships of their chosen profession when a voyage could mean 4-5 years away from family and friends.
So now that I'm older and wiser(honest, I am)
I gently sip and savour the taste of my drink. We sit snuggled together on the sofa like an old married couple, my drink and I, looking back with fond memories over our thirty five year relationship... Till Death do us part........

Sip and Savour.... all grown up like

CHEERS!