Allow me to quote a friend:

"Here’s a laugh – this American columnist has taken it upon herself to explain to the Brits just how wrong they all are for drinking. Uptight puritan hoho – she gets paid to write this stuff; where’s my column??"

Well, first it was fucking with indiscriminate abandon.  Then it was smoking.  Now it's booze.  Again.

As an occasional reader of your newspapers, I'd say you've got your fair share of native nanny-like critics who harp on your li'l island's behavior, no?

Though nothing like a purse-lipped member of America's moral middle class to set y'all to rights.

We're all going to be, sooner or later, forced to join the no fun club.

H.

Who would want to converse with her anyway? If I were sitting near or across from her Id have a race to the bottom of a bottle too.

I hate to tell her but most of the people waiting for a fight outside a pub are pretty sober it's the fights inside pubs that are between drunks. I frequented some fairly interesting places in my ill-spent youth and one of them was a pub where people used to line up outside at closing time and if you fancied a scrap you wandered down the line and took a swing at the opponent of your choice. Being a born coward I never indulged in this and stuck to drinking.

I lived around Barnsley for a while and if she wants to see competition grade drinking she ought to go there. Eight pints then at chucking out time everyone would reel down to Rebecca's, a low grade meat market with ambitions to be a night club. Even so you chance of winding up in a fight were very low unless you were causing trouble. Frankly life around there at that time (and probably even now) was no picnic and getting wrecked at a weekend was the high point for the locals.

The UK always strikes me as a sex-less place, the drinking seems to be a compensation of some sort. No one's getting laid, so they drink instead. Just my observation based on limited experience.

Chums,

Who wouldnt need a swill after dealing with this lass.  Me thinks this lass's premise is wrong.  Not sure that the UK is ahead of the US in problem drinking.

Cheerio.

Last edited by formby (2008-10-14 16:25:40)