Given the choice, I’d choose less choices

THINGS used to be so much simpler.

Remember the days when one could walk into a pub and there would only be the choice of two beers – Fourex or Carlton?

Some pubs didn’t even offer a choice, serving just the one beer – either Fourex or Carlton – and all of the heavy variety, no mid-strength.

Then after you had your fill, you headed out for a feed and again you pretty much had the simple choice of a Chinese, fish and chips or a burger.

Of course, there was the pub feed of a toasted sandwich.

Again, our pub – The Glad – had the simple choice of toasted savoury mince or toasted ham and cheese.

All the sandwiches were wrapped in that toxic cellophane stuff which would invariably stick to the outside of the bread once it was put in the little bar oven toaster.

The bar staff would usually forget about the sandwich until the smell of smoke wafted through the bar after which the tasty feast was retrieved from the oven toaster and plonked in front of the hungry patron.

I can still taste that burnt plastic sandwich, but it was that or nothing outside counter lunch hours.

However, these days there is a myriad of choices.

You walk into a pub and there’s a dozen beers on tap – lager, bitter, craft beer, and some which hardly resemble beer at all.

Another dilemma I face more and more these days is that as work colleagues move on with their respective careers they are replaced by younger and younger work colleagues.

I’ve gone from being the cheeky young member of the news team to the old git referred to affectionately as “Old Timer” or “Old Fart”.

And, gone are the days of simply nipping down to the pub after work for a few frosties.

Young ones these days are into craft beer, cloudy stuff in funny shaped glasses, no Fourex or Carlton for this lot.

Then there’s the food. No fish and chips or burgers for this lot either.

Just last week a few of us had headed out for a burrito, obviously not my idea but I tagged along just the same.

I’d never heard of a burrito until relatively recently, so I have no idea what to order.

Stupidly, I left it to one of my young colleagues to order for me.

Two bites in and flames were shooting out of my mouth.

However, I got through the burrito having lost 3kg in sweat but that was just the beginning of my problems.

Without wanting to put too fine a point on it, the after-effects of a hot burrito does little to encourage close relationships with friends.

I had to decline the offer of a lift home, figuring it best not to be in confined spaces with friends under the circumstances, winding down the windows just wouldn’t do it.

I’m not kidding, there were birds falling out of the trees as I walked home along the tree-lined footpaths of the ghetto.

“But you like it spicy,” my young colleague who ordered the burrito replied to my protests of the inferno I had just swallowed which was now in my lower intestine forming a gas well of coal seam proportions.

Ever the glutton for punishment, the next evening I accompanied the same group down town to view the LIT Festival and again it was suggested, by the same mischievous colleague, that we have a burrito.

However, this time I made sure I was within earshot when she ordered my burrito.

“He likes super spicy,” I heard her tell the counter attendant.

And the whole burrito experience was repeated.

I know, I should have remembered the old adage “once bitten, twice shy”, but I don’t like to give in to the young ones.

Frankly, give me the more simpler times, I couldn’t give a Fourex for today’s choices ...

HOWEVER, THIS TIME MADE SURE I WAS WITHIN EARSHOT WHEN SHE ORDERED MY BURRITO.