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I have this small group of friends who share my affliction
and yet still want to have fun. We've called ourselves
"Can't Drink Won't Drink" and it looks great on the chequebook. The
idea is that we get funding and then enjoy ourselves without drinking, which turns
out to be easier than we imagined. Tonight, for instance,
we're going to the dogs. By that, I mean the dog track
which seems to have been at Belle Vue (where there used to be a zoo, and I didn't
mean that to rhyme) and you can have a meal and watch the racing on TV screens
as an alternative to looking out of the window. I suppose it's also an alternative
to watching the barmaid looking expectantly at the pub door in the hope someone
more interesting will walk in any time now. You might think
that watching thin dogs chase a stuffed rabbit is a bizarre way to spend an evening
and I would agree with you, except that (and I kid you not) last year they even
raced a greyhound and a pigeon against each other. I think the dog won after the
pigeon flew the wrong way. I bet they're not doing that at the pigeon grand prix
in Ibiza later this year. The money for our sober antics
comes from a charitable trust and is administered by Alcohol Concern which is
the UK's major activist where abuse (or at least, control) of strong drink is
concerned. There are groups setting up all over the place
and one day the fledgling organisation may rival Alcoholics Anonymous. One
cheerful band of non-imbibers has formed specifically to go to the opera every
three months in London which takes up all their money (it's about a tenner a week
each for two years), but gives them some cultural respite from rolling their own
fags. It's true that heavy drinkers tend to smoke more
than the average and indeed there's been some research in Canada which indicates
that cigarettes trigger the pleasure zone and may be the cause of the drinking
in the first place rather than the commonly-held view that it's the other way
round. It's not as plain-sailing as it sounds, because
when it comes to spending the money (unless you're an opera buff) it's not always
easy to get everyone to agree on what constitutes enjoying yourself without the
added lift of a glass or two. One of our members wouldn't
go to a concert by a Pink Floyd soundalike band because he said he's not into
rock music. It is sometimes strange looking at the world
through the bottom of an empty lemonade bottle, but the knowledge that you didn't
have to forgo the mortgage for the lemonade is always help.
Sinclair
Newton
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