This Is Not A BLOG!

Date: 08/05/21

Proof!

This isn't remotely interesting to anyone, but I'm quite amused by it, so...

I've always had quite a low tolerance for alcohol.

It may be hereditary. As I've remarked before, my old man was almost completely teetotal following an unpleasant but educative experience with farmhouse cider when he was in his twenties. This didn't stop him from bringing home small cans of lager for me from colleagues' retirement or long-service 'do's' when I was about fourteen or so; nor did it cause him to express disapproval when - at that age and younger - I would enjoy the odd small glass of port and lemonade from time to time over the Christmas and New Year festivities.

I had my first encounter with pub culture when, one day, an uncle of mine took me, my mother, my grandmother and another uncle up to The Grapes pub in the Moss (I would have been about seven at the time, I suppose). I didn't find it alluring, what with the air being blue with tobacco smoke and the presence of some big men I felt intimidated by (not that I wouldn't have felt intimidated had they been smaller; I just felt intimidated by everyone at that age).

My next encounter was far more on my own terms. I had colleagues in sixth form who were far more used to going into pubs than I was, even though they were underage for the most part. The usual haunt for those in Yale College on Crispin Lane was The Walnut Tree (known for short as simply, 'The Walnut') which was five minutes' walk away on Rhosddu Road. The licencees, Fred and Tess Pardoe (of revered memory), were a touch more relaxed about the age rules than most publicans in the vicinity, and so it became a regular venue for student lunchtime imbibing (especially when combined with one of their delightful cheese and onion rolls). Here it was that I - for the first and last time - drank in a pub when underage.

It was the last day of half-term in May 1980 - about three weeks before I turned eighteen. After the end-of-term Students' Council meeting and a Rag Review concert (which usually consisted of recycled Monty Python sketches, I'm afraid, although some original material was sneaked in, largely out of desperation), we repaired to The Walnut. I was immediately totally out of my depth, mostly through paranoia which led me to believe that I would immediately be found out and booted from the premises. "What are you going to have?", asked my friend Alan Howells. I muttered something about lager, only because I scarcely knew any better. "Have a snakebite!", he suggested. After a few moments of uncertainty and internal debate, I agreed and a few minutes later, he brought me my first snakebite.

I used to drink too fast, so it wasn't that long before I ordered a second snakebite (this time, I went up to the bar myself, a sign that the first one had taken full effect). I made this one last until I decided to leave shortly after 2:30; I had started feeling a bit peculiar, and decided that it would be best for me to rid myself of all further temptation and make my way down into the town centre for the bus home. This was almost my downfall, as I nearly got knocked down on the Grosvenor Road roundabout in my befuddlement.

After I had finished my A-levels a few weeks later, The Walnut became a venue for regular Friday-night meet-ups with Alan, Carl Squire, Bill Jones, Steve Hancocks and a few others. I would start walking from my house just before 7:00 and arrive on Rhosddu Road around about eight o'clock. I would take my leave at about ten so that I could arrive at the bus stop on Berse Road in time for the last bus home.

Other destinations later came into play: the Acton Park (aka, 'The Acton'), which was a good quarter of a mile further away and so demanded an even earlier exit on my part; and The Nag's Head on Mount Street in the town centre, which at least meant that I could stay slightly later before briskly staggering up town to King Street bus station for the final D15 of the night. This would get me home shortly before eleven, with a couple of ham rolls left out for me before I collapsed on my bed.

I came undone on one occasion around this time. A college friend was having his eighteenth in the old Miners' Institute on Grosvenor Road, to which he kindly invited me. Bear in mind that we had a thriving brewery in the town at this time (Border), and that their fine bitter was dirt cheap (even more so in the Nag's because it was - or so the legend had it - piped directly into the pub from the brewery, which stood just across the road). Thirty-four pence a pint was not to be overlooked as an attraction, and on this night I downed six of them before making my way (more than a little double-jointed) to the bus station. I was alright until I got home. That's when I had the mini pizza. But I didn't have it for long. I will draw a veil over the next hour or so, except to say that my bedroom rug had to be thrown out.

I didn't quite learn from this, and a New Year's Eve not too long afterwards provided further much-needed instruction. In the football club Christmas raffle, I had won twelve bottles of spirits. As 1981 (I think it was) ticked away, I found myself watching television in my bedroom, my parents having gone to bed an hour or so before. Bored witless, I thought that it was in some way morally wrong to see the new year in without a libation, so I went downstairs to the pantry and selected a bottle of Bacardi and took it up to my room. I swigged (as I thought judiciously) from it over the subsequent forty minutes or so, managing to dispose of about a third of it. I then staggered downstairs, made myself a mug of coffee and brought it back up.

As you will no doubt have guessed, that wasn't the last thing I brought up. This time, I managed to stagger across the landing to the lav, where I became sentimentally attached to the all-conquering name of Armitage Shanks for some considerable time. This of course woke my parents. "Get an ambulance for this boy!", pleaded my father. My mother - ever the hard-headed pragmatist - retorted with, "The hospital's got more important things to do tonight than deal with drunk teenagers!", not entirely without malicious glee, I thought. Once the revolt in my intestines had calmed down to a simmering resentment, I made my way shakily downstairs, where I slept on the sofa with Mum sitting in her chair watching over me. Come about eight-thirty in the morning, I woke up and shambled upstairs to continue sleeping it off. I stayed there until about half past three in the afternoon. That was when my brother called to see me, wanting to know if I fancied going over to the steelworks club for a New Year's pint and possibly a frame or two of snooker. It may surprise you to learn that I agreed; well, I was feeling much better, it was a clear chilly afternoon, and I couldn't bear the thought of having to spend a couple of hours or so under the knowing smirk of my dear, sweet mater.

I think that I've only thrown up from drinking once since then; that was in the Spring of 1984, when I was staying for three weeks out in County Galway as part of my university degree course, and the reason wasn't incipient alcohol poisoning on this occasion (I stayed well away from the local poitín), but the high gas content of Fishwick's lager.

An unwillingness to repeat such experiences, coupled with the onset of type-one diabetes which wouldn't be helped by anything more than very moderate alcohol intake, has kept me more-or-less sober since. My Thursday evenings in Wrexham Folk Club between 1994 and 2004 were punctuated by no more than an absolute maximum of three pints (usually, latterly, Guinness which doesn't cause such a serious gas problem) and - after I had stopped going there - I have confined myself to the odd can of Guinness, a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream at Christmas (although this has now stopped as well; I found that I still had some of it left the following April), and the occasional pint bottle of cider...

...Which brings me to this evening.

(Don't worry; no rugs were harmed in the making of this experience).

My usual cider is Bulmer's Original, and very nice it is, too. The trouble is, the last time I went to get some in Sainsbury's about three weeks ago, there wasn't any. Oh, they had pear cider and goodness knows what else, but not yer actual, authentic apple flavour. Looking around the shelves for an alternative, I saw bottles of George Weston's Medium Dry Organic. Right, I thought, I'll try that.

The bottle has been in the fridge since then, but earlier this evening I thought that I'd have it, seeing as I haven't touched a drop of booze in well over a month. So I opened the bottle, poured it into my pint mug and - accompanied by my standard Saturday supper of grilled cheese - sat at my trying-not-to-workstation watching YouTube videos.

About forty-five minutes later, I drained my mug and went to take it and the plate which had played temporary host to the cheese into the kitchen to do the washing up...only to find that I was quite distinctly wobbling. I made my way into the kitchen still gently oscillating. Then I thought to check the label on the bottle. I was able to compare it with the Bulmer's because there was still an empty bottle of that in the recycling box, because I only put that out every four or five weeks (which is why the binmen no doubt believe that the poor old sod who lives here subsists on a diet of cider, coffee and pickled onions). Bulmer's: 4.5 per cent. George Weston's: 6.0 per cent, that is to say, half as potent again! I stood there and grinned. "I'm pissed!", I thought. I then said it out loud just for effect. "I'm fucking pissed!!". This for the first time in at least fifteen years! I got on with the washing up, managed not to break anything and then, armed with a fistful of dry roasted nuts (*), sate down about it and wrote this tale.

I told you it wasn't remotely interesting, didn't I?

* Q. How do you get a bag of dry-roasted nuts? A. Sit on a radiator, chaps.

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