CANTWELL’S CHRONICLES

I thought burgers might buy me mercy – but my eldest’s review of my drinking didn’t mince words

HAPPY Meal demolished, I gulp back some coffee from the warm paper cup and steel myself to ask the big question. ‘Do you think I drink too much?’ My eldest daughter brandishes a chip and gazes at me across the formica table, the fan whirring overhead with a ‘tut-tut’ and a chill breeze. It’s judgment day.

I’ve asked my daughter here — to the salubrious surrounds of our l ocal multinational fast food joint — to ask her this question, for several reasons.

One: Last week was Ireland’s first ever National Alcohol Awareness Week and the words of Alcohol Forum chairman Pat Harvey are ringing in my ears.

He’d been in the media publicising a themed conference and events, and he’d thrown down the gauntlet to Irish parents — challenging all of us to ask our teenagers what they think of our drinking.

Mr Harvey reckoned that this could serve us up a curveball or two — and he denounced the impact adults’ harmful drinking is having on children as a ‘national scandal’.

The second reason I’m sat ’neath the Golden Arches on this particular Sunday, seeking a scolding, is that I’m in the grip of a certain amount of banal self-loathing. Yes, I went out last night. And, yes, I tore the arse out of it.

I awoke with a jolt at 8.30am. Disorientated. Wondering why I felt like I was about to die. Confusion quickly supplanted by grim recognition... The sensation of having been kicked by a wild horse and hit over the head with a baseball bat was down to rather more explicable events — whether or not I could remember them exactly, or at all. Waking dreams of ice cold cola and a vast trucker’s breakfast invaded the pounding of my head — and I troubled my imploding frontal lobe for the two hours that followed to try and piece together the complex jigsaw of the previous night’s carousing. That sense of ‘Now you’re for it!’ is all too familiar after a night on the tiles. I pulled the duvet over my eyes, hiding from the disapproving world.

Of course, I’ve plenty of ifs and buts at my disposal in my defence. This is not a regular occurrence. A good friend was home from Australia, so celebrations were a must. I overindulged — but I was ready to pay the price.

The third reason for McDonald’s at this juncture is that I’m obviously hotly craving

salt and grease. The fourth — I’m hoping the ‘treat’ aspect will soften my eldest into being gentle in her judgment of my imbibing habits.

So here I am. Sunday afternoon, under the bare lights at Ronald’s place. I’ve picked my moment — emotionally maybe moreso than wisely — to pop the question.

What is she thinking about my drinking?

The verdict is swiftly given — lock, stock and several smoking barrels. ‘Well, dad, I do know when you’ve had too much to drink the night before.’

‘How?’ (I’m on the defensive... The answer hits like a freight train.) ‘Because you are very grumpy and don’t want to do anything for the day, except goof around in your horrible tracksuit and make us listen to Joy Division and other crazy bands like the Cocteau Twins.’ ‘But!’ I say, ‘It doesn’t happen often — maybe once or twice a year.’ Her response — an eruption of laughter — echoes across the restaurant and out the glass doors.

Out of the mouths of babes... or something like that. It’s almost as if she expects me to jump to my feet and declare: ‘Hi, I’m Alan and I’m an alcoholic.’ Of course, I’m not. It’s usually the odd beer or glass of wine with dinner. But my Saturday night was t extbook binge drinking — and the optics of one drink with dinner sometimes stretching to three or four is something many of us might like to think about. To use an unedifying phrase (not in petty revenge, or anything) — one must consider the notion of ‘monkey see, monkey do’.

For parents, protecting your children from the perils of alcohol abuse moves centre stage as they head for their teens.

It’s easy for us to sit in judgment as we see young men and women splayed across our television screens, trashed, each weekend — engaging in anti-social behaviour.

But we need to move off the moral highground and wonder where the impulse to drink foolishly comes from.

In the sage words of the late US fitness guru, Jack LaLanne: ‘If you want to change somebody, don’t preach to him. Set an example and shut up.’

Of course, I’m not angling for the set-up of temperance groups country-wide. All things in moderation — there’s nothing wrong with a civilised, sociable drink. We simply need to be aware, as Pat Harvey put it, that ‘we are not at the top of the league of the heaviest drinkers because a few drink heavily, we are at the top because a lot of people take a lot of drink’.

Perhaps the level of comfort or discomfort we feel in broaching the issue of our drinking with our own offspring is a pretty good yardstick for how we’re getting on...