I have no general knowledge. That’s slightly untrue. I know the exact calorific content of various bakery items, the name of all of Keith Sweat’s albums in the 1980s, the capital of Outer Mongolia, oh, and the mating ritual of the brown garden snail. But that really is pretty much it.
I’ve shamed myself on too many occasions to mention. I thought Jamaica was an island off Africa, that Bing Crosby was a black dude, didn’t know HP sauce was named after the Houses of Parliament (despite the big fat logo on the, erm, front), and certainly never guessed that pineapples didn’t grow on trees.
And these are the ones I’m prepared to mention.
I usually avoid intellectual conversation for fear of looking stupid. I’m okay with logic or philosophical thinking, but fact-based knowledge? World geography or European history? I’ll suddenly develop a severe case of weak bladder.
So I’m on a mission to get high brow. Might have had something to do with not being able to keep up with my 5 yr-old’s schooling. I even picked up a copy of The Economist yesterday. No i didn’t buy it, someone had left it with their half drunk flat white at Caffe Nero. I wonder if THEY got past the first page.
So what embarrassing things did you only learn as an adult? What crucial pieces of world geography did your class learn while you were snogging Tony behind the bike sheds? Clearly I was off smoking in the toilets when they covered herbacious perennials of Southern America.
Oh, and the snail? The pair caress each other with their tentacles and then the male snail pierces the skin of its partner with a ‘love dart’ to provide a favourable environment for his snail sperm. Ah sweet.
A booze filled hole
23 DecA while ago i caught a documentary that looked at each stage in a woman’s life from “underage” through “student” to “mother” and even on to “grannies” and reflected on their relationship to alcohol. Yes it was a rehash of a lot of what we’ve seen before about the booze culture that pervades these shores. Yes there was vomiting and drunken girl on girl snogging (yawn) and the drunken female equivalent of “winding” (ewww). Yet, for some reason this one was even more depressing than usual. It managed to portray an even bleaker, more tragic picture. Why? Because you got to know the people as individuals, and started to see that, pretty much, they all drank due to some deap-seated psychological issue. Usually because they hated themselves.
I’m not even talking hopeless drunks, though there were some of those of course. I’m talking people who just enjoyed a drink, most days, a laugh with their friends, you know not much different from me and you. But watching from the outside in, it was obvious. Issues of loneliness, worthlessness pervaded.
What is it about the Brits that drives us to fill a hole with booze, a hole that should rightly be filled with self-belief? Why do we forever feel we need “dutch courage”, “one for luck”, “one for the road” just to get up and on with our lives? To have the confidence to do stuff we don’t, soberly, believe we can do. Is drinking for confidence as normalised for children growing up as the idea that a good night out must always involve copious amounts of it? Are we a nation of tattered egos, broken spirits, lost souls desparately on the search for something to fill that hole, whether it be alcohol or armfuls of big macs? Or are we simply complicating it. It’s a good laugh, freely available, and quite frankly we’re all just a little bit addicted…. (including those MPs pussy footing around the issue because they’re too scared of having their own crutch taken away).
It’s all a bit depressing really, and nothing more than having to watch those girls again with their pants around their ankles. Girl power? Makes you wonder what my heros The Spice Girls fought so hard for.
Better go drown my sorrows…..
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Tags: alcohol, booze Britain, booze culture