Low life
Damaging
Ever since the smoking police came to power I have been waiting with great apprehension for the same army of bigots to persecute not only drinkers themselves but to start lying about what they now call passive drinking. I can't even drink any more myself because of the medical situa- tion, but what these people say isn't merely waffle and nonsense, it is a nasty neurosis and stream of wrong-thinking.
The other day I read in the Times that the Golders Green Crematorium owners have from now on prohibited the slightly daft, sentimental but benign bereaved to send their loved ones to the ovens with a bottle of their favourite drink alongside them in their coffin. It seems that at a cer- 'It's all "me me me" isn't it?' tain temperature the bottle explodes send- ing poisonous fumes out of the chimneYs which they obviously think in time will pol- lute north London and beyond. I am surprised that this measure is enough for this new lobby but I am sure it won't be for long. I am sure that soon the grand old tradition of launching a ship by cracking a bottle of champagne over its bows will be banned because, when a bub- ble of bubbly pops, it releases gases that endanger the lives of both ship workers and the dignatories responsible for the launch. Stirrup cups at hunts will be tagged with health-warning labels, and it will be hoped that Perrier will take over sponsorship of what was the Hennessy Gold Cup. What is seriously damaging my health is too much tea and I can't get enough of that. I am allowed only a fraction more than one litre of fluid a day. There is abso- lutely no point whatsoever in making a part of that alcohol since alcohol is dehydrating and thirst sheer hell. Tea is much the best of a narrow choice. I now wait with some anxiety to hear whether my tea bags, car- ried by drain out to sea, are choking Dover sole before they have the opportunity to be grilled or surmounted by une bonne femme. I have to say, though, that there is one great blessing on the horizon if the passive drinking idiots get their way. Gone will be one of what I consider to be the most revolting sights beheld by man and that is the wasteless, mindless way in which sports- men, particularly Grand Prix racing drivers, spray each other with perfectly good, drink- able champagne. I loathe the sight of it and I don't even care for champagne greatly Some jockeys with weight problems have tc stick to a diet of champagne and chicken. How odd it is to think that at about the time I left school — 1948 — chicken was level with champagne in the luxury stakes, in my world anyway. In most cafes then yun could always spot the well off, the man who was doing well, because he was the one eat' mg roast chicken. The rest of us were doomed to eat, if something better than sandwiches and rolls, mere steak and kid- ney pudding, roast lamb or fish and chips. Oh, happy days. We must have been niad, to envy that convenient but boring anima' which is steadily taking over the world. A marvellous everyday meal you could get 111 workmen's cafes which you don't see any more was roast lamb, mashed potatoes and cabbage, all with proper gravy, for about two shillings and ninepence. Now, you have to go to Simpsons for such food. And they kept navvies going in those days with the size of the helpings. In Camden Town one day I was having a half a crown meal and counted no fewer than 12 potatoes on my plate and they had put a jug of gravy — not made with stock cubes — on my table. I bought a chicken yesterday and am now as so often lum- bered with it for two days. I am rather sur- prised that the bigots haven't revived the hysteria about the dangers to health of eat- ing chicken, which originated in Italy in the 1950s. A couple of silly scientists announced that chicken did strange things to the hormones and that it was almost turning men into women. They said that men were beginning to grow breasts and that it made them effeminate. Hey-ho. I am now convinced that reading the Times Is damaging my mental health.
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