Social drinking brings on yahoo behaviour

AS YOU get more experienced at this big wobbly thing called life, you question why we do things the way we do. Why do we eat at certain times? Why, contrary to nature’s design, do so many men shave? Why do we have pubs?

It’s this last question I’d like to focus on today, so – assuming it’s past 9am – put some crisps in a bowl, pour yourself a glass of sherry and we’ll begin.

Drink, like treachery, has always been with us in Scotland. It’s a salve for the soul and a boot up the bahookey for those backward at coming forward in social situations.

The existence of pubs, therefore, can hardly be counted surprising. But it just struck me as odd how, unquestioningly, we reach a certain age and must follow this ritual of going to the pub. You never really think about it. You just do it. And you keep doing it. It’s where you meet friends. And it’s where you get squiffy.

This week, Finnish scientists announced that, in a surprise development, the nearer someone lives to a bar the greater their chances of heavy drinking.

Oddly enough, the converse holds for me: the suburb where I live has no pub and I do not drink. Once, someone proposed converting the old railway station into one.

But the sleepy folk roused themselves from slumber and protested. They weren’t protesting necessarily at the pub in itself. They were protesting at something happening.

They feared too that, with a pub, other things might happen. So the pub was nixed. And, happily, nothing continues to happen.

A pub wouldn’t attract me anyway. If I started drinking again, it would be on the same basis as before: as a private, spiritual matter. I deplore social drinking, believing it encourages yahoo behaviour, whooping noises and so forth.

Drinking at home, one tends merely to nod off quietly. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to place a parking cone on one’s cranium.

Romantic entanglements are highly unlikely, particularly with the wife. And when the need to micturate arises – as inevitably it does – you may waddle blindly to your own lavatorial suite instead of desperately trying to find a suitable expanse of shrubbery in the town centre.

I was never really a big drinker, certainly compared to the excesses one reads about or watches on TV. But I was regular and just thought I’d give it up for a night, which turned into a week then a month then 16 months at the time of going to press.

It was surprisingly easy: just a habit to be stopped. Now my evening treat is chocolate. I suppose, by the logic of Finnish science, the nearer one lives to a sweetie shop the fatter one gets.

Hang on! There’s a sweet shop in our suburb. And, as it happens (or indeed otherwise), quite a lot of residents are fat. What’s the telephone number for Finland? I think I’ll give them a call.