Honni Soit*

Yesterday would have been my dad's 90th birthday.

However we tried, we never agreed with each other.
He always hoped that I would turn out like him,
but the times conspired to produce different results.

Circumstance changed what went on around it.

He never understood nature/nurture arguments.
He liked his work, being drunk with his mates,
and the false sense of rest he had with his hangover,
sprawled in front of the television playing 'sport',
in the house that he believed that he alone owned,
where for years family had to deny to themselves,
and each other, how often they tiptoed around him.    

He never understood how
'hangovers and children do not mix'.
He is not here to celebrate this date,
he checked out aged 74
after too many hangovers, 
I checked out of his life
just a few short years before that.

His legacy to me was that
when I hear new speeches
by larger-than-life-liar-politicians
I spot sooner the type they are
by how much their speeches
reminds me of him. 

I turn their speeches off
and seek a media 'breathes' more,
that is, a media that is not a vacuum. 

Happy Honi Soit* dad, you have earned it.

*Latin for 'evil be' 

Great Marketing Failures Of Our Time

The cooking with Buckfast cook book,
in which this popular tonic wine,
the recipe for which dates as far back
as the1880's, is used in the preparation
of different fruits and vegetables.
Alas, the sales of the wine went up
but sales of what to do with it 
other than swig it from the bottle 
whilst on the streets, and leave the bottle
lying about after, remained stubbornly low.
Update; I should have known that the idea
of The Buckfast recipe had been been taken up.
Here is a thirty minute radio programme
about the gentrification through food
of this bracing drink.

 

Drink,

when often taken to excess,
will convert everyday charm
into a wheedling oversensitivity.

In Vino Veritas

When I was young enough to want to drink
I could not afford it I, so stayed in at home.
But every night Father spent hours at the pub.
When he returned he always full of conflict.

What I see now, but could not see then,
is how the nearer he got to his house
the flatter his pleasure in the drink became,
which explains the regularity of his belligerence;
He still wanted to be back with his mates
dragging out the dregs of the evening.

I was an adult when I began to enjoy drink
and I only drank at home; my sole motive
was to increase the pleasure of my evening meal.
My motto was 'never get drunk far from your bed'.
As a truism it works rather well; the shorter the distance
the better I know it and the more I valued the journey.

Home and bed bred self respect through familiarity.

The motto also works for when drink is consumed
in quantity, for its own sake. It accounts better
for the changes the mood of the drinking consumer;
The shorter the journey toward rest, as the effects of the drink
wear off, the easier the mood changed become to own.

The self knowledge my father never had is now mine to own. 

You Can Never Know Yourself Too Well

When I was young enough to drink but could not afford it
I had to stay in evenings in my parents house. But every night
Father spent several hours at the pub and walked home
and always arrived full of conflict. What I see now,
but misunderstood then, is how the nearer he got to the house
the more his sense of pleasure in the drink went flat,
which now explains the regularity of nightly belligerence.
He still wanted to be with his mates enjoying the dregs of the evening.

When I began to drink I was an adult and I drank at home,
and mostly to increase the sense of pleasure with food.
I adopted the motto 'never get drunk too far from your bed'.
As a truism it worked; the shorter the distance the better I knew it.
And what else was home for if not breeding respect through familiarity?

I now realize another advantage of my motto
-moods change when drink is served in any quantity.
If you travel less when the effects the drink wear off
it is much easier to adapt with, and own, that changing mood.

The self knowledge my father never had is now mine to own. 

Making Unease More Memorable

Drinking to the recently dead
makes the living as disagreeable
with each other as they who are
being remembered via the sharing
of a more then a few drinks once were.
But for those who need to mask their
pretence of forgetting, by 'moving on'
through drink, then who can stop them?

The Alcohol Consuming Classes

Some people will be gifted by life enough to say
'I have taken more out of  alcohol than it has taken out of me'.
But for the vast majority of the alcohol consuming classes
the exception proves the rule. The greater the consumption
the more returns diminish, which is why moderaton works.
Lest marraige be in haste, and repentence through relationships
be less a matter of grace and more a matter of infinite purgatory.

The Price Of Seduction

It is not so much how in the drink you take the girls clothes off,
 but how in the process alcohol will disarm your defenses
 in a way  that after she is done with your defenses
they will never work like they did before you met her.