Saturday 2 January 2016

Eat, drink and be merry. Tomorrow ...


Did you watch the Sherlock special last night? What a clever all-rounder Mark Gatiss is, but not as clever as Mycroft. We can only guess how clever he is.

There is at least another 10 days of wind and rain forecast for the whole of G.B. but I am beginning to get cabin-fever. Watching TV last night made us realise why we stopped some time ago. By the time you are ready to go to bed, your mind is racing but your body is shot through inactivity.

Bang on January 1st, our government have unveiled their latest diktats regarding the Health of the Nation - any earlier and nobody would have listened, of course.

Sugar got pushed up into the bracket of tobacco months ago, and there have been half-hearted attempts to stop the binge-drinking which makes most city streets horrible places to be after 8.00 at night.

Then they focussed on older drinkers - people like me who don't go on the rampage outside every night, but sit at home behind closed doors sipping wine and generally minding our own business. I am not a drain on the NHS, and I don't intend to be, but all the Accident and Emergency units throughout the country are clogged with 18-30 year olds, the peak times being right now.

So the latest over-kill measure has been to bring the safe units of alcohol consumption for men down to a par with the recommended maximum for women, despite the sad fact that men can withstand almost twice as much alcohol as women without irreparable damage, due to some difference in enzymes or something biological. It's all about equality and equal rights, and the only way that drunks will listen to you is if you shout.

I have my own methods to protect myself - this is why the decanter of sloe gin I made is pretty much untouched. Like Sherlock with his morphine and cocaine, I have come to the conclusion that I am a user, not an addict. That is not to say that I don't over-use on a pretty regular basis, but if I was an addict then I would not have as many unfinished bottles of alcohol strewn about the place as there are this Christmas. I spent several years taking cocaine on a very regular basis too, so I know I was not addicted to that either, when I abruptly stopped.

I need to find someone who really likes sloe gin, but is not an addict or an over-user. I wouldn't wish that headache on anyone - no, that's not true. You can have it, but I want the decanter back.

I don't over-eat either, but then again, neither do alcoholics. The British middle-class obsession with food becomes greater as the middle-classes become more numerous, but all the fat people are now poor, they tell us. In the old days before the Welfare State, all poor people were thin, and everyone smoked.

The government advice on how to save the NHS a few billion quid is crudely timed to the second to coincide with the brief period when the more simple amongst us are making resolutions we won't keep for improving our well-being, consideration for others, blah blah.... of course. It really helps that the tear-jerk (but very charming) Greenwich Health Authority record made it to Number One in the charts this year, helped by that video. Green Eyes issued a challenge for us to watch it without getting a moist eye or two, and I failed.

I used to be much keener on cooking years ago, but the obscene preoccupation with food which produces all those bloody programs, celebrity chefs and semi-pornographic magazines devoted to it have made me lose my appetite. When I was keen on cooking, Mrs Beaton was my bible, and the illustrations were lithographic art-works, not hi-resolution, close-up photos glistening with drizzled fluids, suggesting sex with Nigella. Christ, all I want now is nutrition.


28 comments:

  1. I was recently given a small bottle of Sloe Eau-de-Vie; delicious, but it remains untouched.

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    1. There is a good reason why it remains untouched, I expect.

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  2. I use my mum's Mrs Beeton, with its 200 black and white illustrations. The sloe gin that I made is also untouched. I looked at it the other night and put it away again.

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    1. Mine has colour - the jelly section could be used as wall paper. See Cro above...

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    2. mine has 8 colour plates but the jelly is in black and white.

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    3. Trust your jelly to be black. What colour are your milk-shakes?

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    4. Mine's back in the UK, but I'm sure I remember some colour; especially the crazy jellies.

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    5. There were different ones printed over a huge period of time. I think we have the deluxe versions.

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  3. See yer one above can come and beat my bowl anytime....

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    1. I would understand that one better in Gallic.

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    2. Do you mean as in what the Gauls utter Steve ?

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    3. Sorry, Gaelic, but I'm sure they would have understood each other, Melv.

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  4. You have the best one Tom ...... the one with the coloured drawings of towering jellies and blancmanges. Mine is more like Rachel's ...... Black and White photographs, probably done in the 1930's.
    Couldn't believe they are lowering the amount of alcohol consumption AGAIN !!! XXXX

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    1. I think that Tom's is the older version ..... the one with beautiful coloured drawings, not photographs. XXXX

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    2. I'll look up the print run date and settle the argument.

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  5. I have the solution. We must revert to agrarian democracies; everyone works for sustenance, except the shopkeepers who provide the plows and window panes for tiny houses. Before the days of refined sugar. Your NHS and our CDC should try killing the root, not controlling the jungle.

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    1. About 400 years too late. All us Brits have bad teeth because of sugar consumption. Sugar = Slaves. The jungle burns as we speak. Go back to the drawing board.

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  6. Agree about cabin fever Tom. It is very wet here but if I spend one more day shut up in the house i shall go mad. So it is out for lunch tomorrow (yes, I am fed up with catering too) whatever the weather.

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    1. Go shooting with the Framer, Weave. It gets you out of the house and it also provides dinner.

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    2. Framer? No, we have too many of those here in Bath. I meant Farmer, of course.

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  7. Perhaps the answer is to stop watching TV chefs and ignore government advice? :-)

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    1. You think that I have not given myself this advice over the last 50 years? I only got a BBC TV licence recently because I felt sorry for the BBC. I watch no more TV than I used to before. You cannot help but be aware of the zeitgeist, though.

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  8. I got irritated by Sherlock but it redemed itself in the last quarter

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    1. Yes, it was a bit messy, but I liked the way they justified the switch between the 19th and 21st centuries. Best to stick to the original stories maybe.

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  9. Watch all those advertisement for health - or better: don't! - and see how fashion changes, quickly --- one year it is bone density (now they found out that calcium tablets don't help), heart attack etc pp. I follow my own "diet" (have never been on one) and, use - what I hope is - my common sense. I agree very much with your description "the obscene preoccupation with food" - let me add: mostly by voyeurs (the look at those chefs and devour junk food.

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    1. Chefs are renowned for eating junk food when they go home.

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    2. Also, they tend to include a higher proportion of cocaine users than a lot of jobs. Strange, considering what coke does to your appetite.

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