On Economics

 

Imagine, if you will, standing at a bar.  Not difficult, but I hope I haven’t put the idea in your head in such a way that you will now depart before having read what is to come (although in fact, your time is probably better spent that way than this.  Off you pop then, if you must, but when you get there raise a glass to me).  Imagine now (if you are indeed still here) that you get talking to someone at that bar.  A stranger to you, someone you’ve not met before as far as you can remember, but perfectly affable.  You chat for a while, perhaps about football, or the state of the nation, or perhaps about nothing at all.  One of those rambling conversations encompassing the world, and everything within it, that the bar of a pub will engender.  Imagine, finally, that at a certain lull in your talk, said stranger hands you a few pounds.  You accept gratefully, but acknowledge inwardly that in fifteen minutes or half an hour, you will have to reach into your pocket and hand him an equivalent sum, and that this back and forth could go on all night.  Imagine it.  Go on.  It’s insane.

And yet, as any seasoned drinker could tell you, this is, in a certain sense, what is going on all the time in pubs up and down the country.  Except, as any seasoned drinker could go on to tell you, that it’s not.  This is important.  Let me explain. 

What the scenario above demonstrates is that money and beer are not directly equivalent, that exchanging pints is not the same thing as exchanging money.  Or in other words, economics, as it is commonly sold to us, is bollocks.

It is true that money, in our current system of social organisation, acts as a kind of tax on the pleasure principle, that when one is poor the evening is measured by the amount of time it takes to consume the money one has.  Money thus operates as a means of imposing a degree of restraint on pursuits that would otherwise get out of hand very quickly (this, it pains me to say, may not actually be a bad thing).  The fact remains however that the pint occupies a different space than the money that allowed it to be purchased.

If I buy you a beer, it cements a friendship and, further, exhibits solidarity towards the environment we both joyfully inhabit.  And if you take money out of that equation, it will still mean basically the same thing. 

Giving cold cash rarely means anything at all, and if it does, it expresses – as it creates - a power relationship.  If I give you money, I’m basically patronising you.  I’m saying I have something you want, and in my infinite goodness I deign to bestow it upon you.  Money is patronising, but beer is respect, and if a beer is allowed to become totally divorced from its price, then the power in money, insidious and unnatural as it is, is neutralised.  At least in any situation that counts.

Granted, the connection to cash makes the buying of beer a sacrifice, but it is, in most cases a sacrifice that will be returned.  I buy you a drink, you buy me one.  There is, it’s true, an obligation involved, but it’s an obligation that is not rigorously enforced: occasionally, by the necessity that money imposes, one half of the equation is out of balance.  Over time, however, these equations will find a way of balancing out.  If it’s not me tonight, then it will be somebody else some other time.  Ultimately, as long as you don’t give in order to receive, then things will find a way to work themselves out.  It’s only people who keep accounts who lose their bar room karma.

In other, more succinct words, you could take money out of the equation, and the beer would still mean the same thing.  You could not take the beer away and leave only the money, because the entire point of the exchange would disappear into a meaningless vortex of paper and coin.

And this, I think, is the point.  In any society that rewards the rich and punishes the poor, there will inevitably be an attempt to justify and make natural the structures which support that system.  The attempt to make any exchange that isn’t based on the idea of accumulation and naked self-interest seem unnatural reflects a structural desire to reduce human fellow-feeling, to atomise society and isolate the individual, such that he has no point of reference save the dogma transmitted through advertising and economic policy.

Enough has been said about potlatch and similar systems amongst students of anthropology for it need to be repeated here; but the pub – at least on the side of the bar I habitually frequent – is another example to add to the list of functioning, spontaneous, and existent alternatives to the basic social structures we are forced to inhabit.

Right then.  Enough of the theory: I’m off to quaff for the salvation of mankind.  Cin-cin.

To the Seven Billion

 

They say that as of Halloween last year (or perhaps it was the year before.  Tempus fugit, and all that) there are seven billion people in the world.  That means there are six billion nine hundred and ninety-nine million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine people who aren’t me.  Much as I love being me, and much as I love spending time with someone I hold in such high regard, when I go to the pub a significant factor in my reasoning to do so is to have some degree of contact with some of those people who aren’t.

Think of it this way: I love beer, and that’s what I do when I drink away from home.  That’s who I am.  But that doesn’t mean that I don’t also love wine, and rum, and gin, and pretty much the whole gamut of human ingenuity that looked at grapes and various grains and thought, “very nice, but I bet we can make it better.”  Humanity, and its dissatisfactions (and its methods of distraction, for that matter), is truly a marvel to behold.

And that is why I drink.  Or at least, that is part of the reason why I drink.  To bask in the marvel that is our magnificent species, and to have as much contact with them as I can.  That is also why, in this the city of my exile, I occasionally get very wound up by them.  Pubs are a social location, they exist to facilitate social interaction.  They exist to enable social interaction.  And thus, if one goes to a pub, one is – or at least one should be – leaving oneself open to be socially interacted with.  It is the tragedy of the gentrified pub that the customers it engenders are people who completely fail to understand this.  Granted, the kind of person who habitually haunts the gentrified pub is not necessarily the kind of person one would automatically want to talk to as one flows through one’s evening, but the point still stands.  As marvellous as mankind is, it does still throw up a few duff ones.

That is, perhaps, unfair.  And in fact is a thing that should be remembered: simply being uneducated in the ways of the world (the pub, in this instance), is not the same as being a bad person.  And to be fairer still, there are an awful lot of nutters in the world, and a fair few of them like to pass their time in pubs.  Whilst they may be very interesting from an anthropological point of view, you wouldn’t necessarily want to get stuck in a conversation with one.  Still, I would count this as an occupational hazard, and as I have mentioned elsewhere there are ways of avoiding these encounters.

The point here is that the pub is, and has to be to function, fundamentally a democratic institution.  If a cat can look at a king, then a habitual barfly can talk to whomsoever he chooses.  Whomsoever he chooses may choose he does not want to have that particular conversation with that particular barfly at that particular time, but then we are into the messy business of human relations.  One should, however, be open at all times to the possibility that your interlocutor, as you sit at the bar (especially if you sit at the bar), might be a person worth knowing.  And, should you not be aware of the fact, I’ll tell you: if you sit at the bar, you are telling the world you’re up for a chat.

Right, so here’s to the health of the Seven Billion.  I’m off now to bother some strangers.  Cin-cin.

Decisions, Decisions

There are many reasons to drink, and “just because you can” ranks highly amongst them.  There will, however, always be consequences arising from having that drink, and although most of the time we dive in headlong and heedless (and quite rightly so), the fact that there will be consequences can be harnessed, by the experienced drinker, to suit his own ends.

More specifically, having that drink may clarify what it is that he wants, and make the actions which would make whatever it is come to pass more likely to happen.  In other words, drinking facilitates the making of what, to the sober self, may appear to be bad decisions, and in general I have found that one should always defer decisions until one is not in a fit state to make them.

Now, in positing a distinction between drunken and sober selves, I should make clear that I am not speaking of that massive change in personality indicative of a problematic relationship with the gods of grape and grain.  Rather, I am merely drawing attention to the fact that the drunken and sober selves see the world, and the self within that world, in very different ways.  The drunken self tends to see things more clearly, and certainly more intensely than the sober, and is less likely, perhaps less able, to foresee complications.  It is a world where between the conception and the action, the desire and its resolution, no shadow falls.  Or at least, not a very big one.

Many times I have woken, broken in the morning and desperately hungover, and found notes I have left for myself about what is to be done that day.  These are directions from the drunken self to the (nearly) sober, aware of the problems it will be facing at time of reading, and doing its best to help from its vantage point of clarity.  (That is the respect my drunken self shows to my sober self: it suggests, it advises, and on occasion it cajoles, but it doesn’t commit.  And since to “call her” would be such a phenomenally bad idea that even my drunken self has its reservations, it is a respect for which I am grateful.)

The sober self, however sensible it may perceive itself as, is not a fool.  It is aware of the nagging desires that assail the human soul, but has the advantage over most in that it knows it has a (fairly) reliable handmaiden with which to realise them should their nagging become too much to bear.

For instance, when money is tight (and for the drinking man, money almost always is), but you really want that bottle of expensive rum, a few pints in the pub (which you will justify as a legitimate pit stop on your meanderings about town) will break down the resistance between you and it.  You may wake the next morning anxious and regretting the money spent, but you will be aware that when evening comes and you have your philosophical nightcap, that that bottle, and the pause for thought it enables, will make you happy in a way that the mere presence of money – or more accurately, the absence of quite such a degree of debt – never can.

Even the agonised process of writing, hampered as it is by the strictures of hangovers and the inertia of sobriety, can be facilitated by strong drink.  The trickle, the slow drip of words can be transformed into a mighty torrent, a process I am watching happen now, as I write, a couple of pints down in the hushed stillness of an afternoon pub.  It is, it must be admitted, a torrent often in need of a good editor [Editor’s note: in dire need], but that is a service the sober self is happy to perform, out of gratitude if nothing else.

Alcohol is the medium through which two ways of being can reach each other, through which the cold world of reality and received wisdom, and the world of the heart’s desires, can mingle and mix.

Right.  I’m off to buy an expensive bottle of rum now, and maybe, who knows, I might just call that girl.  Cin-cin.

Hangover II: The Anatomy of a Hangover

I’ve never understood those people who, after a binge of greater or lesser proportions, can wake up and say, “never again.” To me it smacks of rank amateurism and a level of self-delusion I can’t even begin to contemplate.  To me, no matter how bad, the hangover must be embraced as part of the drinking experience: a souvenir of the night before, a memento mori forming a more extreme layer of sobriety.

That said, if there were a way to avoid the things, I would.  Although I have had some limited success on this front by taking half a Valium before bed, as a system it fails in two important regards.  First, Valium is expensive, and that money would be better spent on drinks; and second, it requires organisation: not only the purchase of the pills, but also the wherewithal to actually remember to take the things.  Any hangover prevention strategy that depends on the organisational capabilities of the drunk in question is ultimately doomed to failure.

So, in the ordinary scheme of things, one is left hungover, stranded, in exile upon the island of sobriety’s revenge.  Broadly speaking, I find they can be broken down into one of three kinds:

1) The Common or Garden Hangover.  Symptoms Include: an “oof” upon waking, dryness of the mouth, a slight tiredness behind the eyes, an acute awareness of the membrane around the brain.  Almost indistinguishable from the simple fact of being alive.  Treatment: water, coffee, orange juice, toast.  Tea with sugar if symptoms persist.  Distinctive Activities: checking with trepidation your wallet to see if by chance you have any change from the night before.

2) The Proper Hangover.  Symptoms Include: “oh my God,” “oh fuck,” or in certain iterations, “oo ma heed.”  Akin to waking up into a brick wall.  Extreme dryness of the mouth and throat, difficulty swallowing, shaking of the extremities, sense of brain collapsing in on itself.  Low-level guilt, paranoia and fear, although often tempered by a naughty schoolboy’s sense of mischievous pride.  Treatment: either, strong drink, Full English Breakfast, more strong drink; or cowering indoors with the curtains drawn, hoping the world doesn’t find you.  Distinctive Activities: checking with trepidation to see if there is anything left in your bank account; desperately trying to remember to whom you now owe money.

3) The Post-Bender Psycho-Physiological Crisis.  Symptoms Include: stunned silence on waking, perhaps a sigh of relief as one realises one is, probably, still alive.  Tremors in the body and usually in the soul as well.  Uncertainty with regard to whom one’s brain belongs, as any thoughts one has tend to detach themselves from the inside of one’s skull and take on a life of their own.  Fear.  Guilt and paranoia begin to emerge once one regains partial ownership of one’s head.  Treatment: none, as suicide is beyond you.  May decay into other forms of hangover over time, and therefore be treatable as such.  Distinctive Activities: a remarkably sanguine acceptance of the economic freefall one is now condemned to, a sanguinity dampened only slightly by the realisation one’s internal organs are now worth significantly less on the black market than they were before one started.

As I say, it’s just a part of the life we’ve chosen.  Cin-cin.

In Memoriam Peter O'Toole

Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell.

In a Bad Mood

 It gets to you sometimes.  It really does.  It starts with the perennial shortage of money, and ends with a long walk home, half-cut and seething, wondering why you’re doing this to yourself.  When money’s tight and your opportunities for distraction are thus limited, if your chosen pub lets you down, it’s going to be a long time until you can give it the chance to make things right again.

And in the meantime, you seethe.  There is a lot to seethe about in this world these days, most of it to do with childish faith in bankrupt economic theories and the shocking disregard in which our “elected” representatives hold us.  And I confess, I seethe about these things on a regular basis.  But (and I suspect it is by this and similar mechanisms that the powers that be manage to get away with their bullshit), they don’t make me anything like as angry, or trouble my sense of well being half as much as being disappointed by an excursion to the pub.

I blame the particular pub for this, and more than that, I blame the drinking culture in this town.  In this I am justified.  The fault lies squarely on an inability to accommodate Bacchanalian excesses on a weekday.  But as an individual within this localised society, ones perception of oneself is coloured by that society’s perception of one. Given that ones post-excessive, hungover state of mind is likely anyway to be touched by the hand of guilt (for no good reason, or at least, no good reason that you can remember), the perception of others – others who, it must be emphasised again, are absolutely in the wrong - weighs heavily upon one.

It’s not enough to touch your core beliefs, of course, but it saps the joy that surrounds them.  Without that joy, without the lift that the thought of going to the pub gives you (and this is all the more true when your financial situation curtails the opportunities to actually do so), you lose the sense of consolation, the sense that there is another way of being which you can attain.  If not right now, then tomorrow or next week or next month.  The pub, in any worthwhile context, smiles at you, it urges you on through the quagmire of the quotidian, and basking in that promise you’ll find a way to reach it.  If the pub frowns, then you’re lost, trapped in the festering, bubbling, seething morass of other people’s misplaced – and misguided – morality.

The absence of a healthy drinking culture means there is no community of drinkers that can be relied upon and among whom you can take your place.  You may, by chance, run into a few pleasantly inebriated people at the bar, but it is a situation that cannot be relied upon to manifest itself regularly.  Bad nights happen, of course, wherever you drink, but if there’s money, and a place where your brand of merriment is more commonly appreciated, then one bad evening will disappear in the alcoholic tide of other evenings.  As it is, you’re beached, stranded on the polluted shores of other people’s sobriety.

The truth is, under normal circumstances, I could probably drink my way out of this impasse.  Throwing alcohol at a problem is a failsafe solution to most things.  Let down by the pub, though, the question arises of where this course of existential therapy would take place.  That pub doesn’t appeal, and if that pub - which hitherto has come closest to satisfying your socio-alcoholic needs in this town - isn’t working, then the chances of any of the others doing so is small.  When the symbiosis of pub and punter has broken down, what is there that one can do?

Like getting back on a bike after you’ve fallen off, you have to get back in there.  A line must be drawn, a stand must be made.  In any relationship, a time comes when you have to say, up with this I will not, cannot, put.  And that time is now.  So, as soon as money permits, I will be there, drinking heavily for my beliefs, consequence be damned.  I have right on my side, I have faith in my heart.  So cin fucking cin.

On Relationships and Their Manifestations

 

You drink because you want to, or perhaps because you must.  You drink for pleasure, you drink from boredom, and you drink to ease the pain.  You drink for company and to lubricate the wheels of social interaction, and often enough, you drink to get away from everything and everyone.  You drink.  And that’s a good thing.

Because you drink, you frequently find yourself in pubs.  Because you’ve been drinking for a long time, you find your relationship with pubs more fundamental than your relationship to booze.  Your relationship with the pub is, as I may have mentioned before, clearly inconceivable without the booze, and naturally it is the booze that draws the two of you together in the first place, but once you’re there, your relationship with the particular pub in question can blossom into existence.

Now clearly there are pubs that, having been once, you’d never go back to again.  Theme pubs, gastro-pubs and the like, where the gastro has so overtaken the pub that the honest drinker is pushed into a corner and left feeling that his simple need to consume the establishment’s massively overpriced beer is an inconvenience.  Where any semblance of someone having fun is to be frowned upon.  If you drink amongst people for whom a second glass of wine is viewed as risqué, then what chance do you have?

Then there are pubs that simply happen to be convenient, neatly positioned for you to pause and regroup on your journey from A to B.  They may be perfectly pleasant in their own right, you may even find that you tarry a little longer than you had anticipated.  Quite possibly to the extent you decide that whatever it was you were going to do at B is not worth the bother and perhaps you will just stay for another one after all.  The chances are, however, given that for your everyday peregrinations it’s a little bit out of the way, you won’t go back.

But once in a while, you stumble into a pub for the first time, and something clicks.  It answers a need in you.  Perhaps it’s a particular calm, or then again, a particular vivaciousness in the atmosphere.  Perhaps it’s the ease with which you fall into conversation with the gentlemen at the bar.  Perhaps it’s as simple as the barmaid being pretty and open to distraction.  Or perhaps it’s something more intangible.  It would be easy to overwork the psychology involved, but there is a sense of recognition when you find a pub to which you immediately know you will return, a sense of familiarity, a sense of felicity, a sense of yes, right here.

That said, no relationship is always plain sailing, and even that initial sense of rightness can be misleading.  You can go back to a place at find the atmosphere gone, twats at the bar, and a superfluity of boorish barmen.  Even then, though, on the strength of the initial encounter, you are inclined to give it another chance or two, and if like me, you are still bereft of a proper local to call your own, a few more after that.  At the very least, you come to an understanding.  While it may not be The One, it is at least there, and fulfilling at least some of your needs.

Thus I find myself without a local as such, but with at least a couple of pubs I enjoy and that I’m seeing on a regular basis.  While I may have moved on, I have perhaps not yet fully let go of the old pub, and am still looking for something of that in any new pub I chance upon.  And that is perhaps in part because something deep within me is longing to hear those three little words that can change the world, three little words that make the whole of that mess we call existence make sense.  Those three little words that at the very least ensure a night of magic: “on the house.”  Cin-cin.