A Walk-up Start To Getting Legless
THE SUNDAY AGE
Sunday December 31, 1995
If you drink and drink, you're a bloody idiot.
I HAVE been asked to convey to you my thoughts about the more challenging portions of the holiday season (or what one festively- seasoned pal refers to sternly as ``the pisstivities"). Social scientists would do well to study why at this time of the year everybody is either legless drunk, hungover, frantically hysterical and exhausted, cranky as all get out, clinically depressed or Father Christmas.
It is this very special time of year that I am reminded of a gaily colorful poster produced many years ago for the Women's Christian Temperance Union, called, if I recall correctly, ``For a Happy Party, the Clever Hostess Serves Fruit Drinks".
For a happy party at this time of the year, the clever hostess would serve valium and Eno and have a policy in the place for the suppression of small arms fire near the barbecue. She might also consider being interstate at the time.
Because the period around Christmas and the New Year should be marked on the calender as Barking Mad Drunks Week. They are everywhere. They lurch out of pubs and straight on to the road. They turn up at the door with a bottle of Bundy asking for someone called Barry. They insist on telling you about the time they were abducted by aliens. They burst into tears on a bus and try to make the driver take them to the Big Pineapple (for sentimental reasons). They climb the Christmas tree at the office party and attempt to eat a Christmas tree bauble.
Then they sit down in the lift singing ``God Rest You Merry Whatsyerface, Let Nothing La La La! Rudolph With Yer Nose So Thingie; On the Feast of . . . Stephen From The Mail Room! Let's tongue kiss!" Seasonal drunks will get very cross if you do not share their brilliant ideas for entertainment, such as ``Way-heyyyy! Lesh all drive down the median stip, shouting!" and ``There's only banana liqueur and Guinness stout left! Yippee! Cocktails!" Any gentle attempts to dissuade them will be met by them stealing your trousers, calling you a party pooper or falling unconscious into the coleslaw. And that's just the teenagers.
It may be that my time spent living in the Northern Territory has prejudiced me against people who think a slab of Melbourne Bitter is morning tea. It may be that I have certain wowser tendencies. Which is not to say that I don't get drunk. I do so get drunk. It's just that during my time that I am actually drunk I imagine I am being terribly sophisticated and amusing.
It's only afterwards that I remember I pulled my frock over my head and recited `The Man From Snowy River' to an empty room and then threw up in the host's letter box. It is much easier to be horrified by other drunks. I find it very hard to be horrified at myself when I am drunk, because at that time my judgment is impaired by alcohol. (Logic has always been a strong point.) There are three major phases of driving behavior over the festering season. Firstly, the pre-Christmas free-for-all.
In this preliminary phase it is up to any car in front of yours to park suddenly in the middle of the street, turn left from the right-hand lane, go two kilometres an hour on the freeway, or try to drive through a fast food joint which doesn't have a drive-through facility.
This is closely followed by the Christmas to New Year weaving all over the road interlude, and culminates in the New Year's maelstrom of driving on the wrong side of the road or the wrong way down a one-way street, or ideally, rear-ending the booze bus and attempting to blow into the constable's left ear. This New Year's Eve phase may only be varied by waiting until 8.30am for a cab.
I'm off to be terribly sophisticated and amusing. Taxiiiiii!!!!
© 1995 THE SUNDAY AGE