DGB
I’ve been a really bad binge drinker all my life.
I remember one night - let me rephrase that - I don’t remember one night when friends took me to a night club while I was travelling overseas. Okay, some people would call it by another name - a girly bar. Fair sauce of the shake bottle, but it was a pretty high-class joint. At least I hope it was.
For you see, I drank far too much for my own good, and there’s a very good chance that in my time in this establishment I may have inadvertently seen something naughty. I’m not saying I did, mind. It’s just that with the night being a complete blank, there’s every chance that I did.
Anyway, the very first thing I did when I awoke the very next morning was to ring my beautiful wife back in Oz and apologise for the things I had no memory of seeing but could very well have.
I did this for three very sensible reasons.
One, the things I didn’t recall seeing might have been very naughty indeed. I’m talking perhaps exposed nipples here. Mine or someone else's.
Two, my beautiful wife deserves better than to have a husband who even wanted to see such naugthy things in the first place, even though, as I stress, maybe I didn’t see anything naughty after all which sort of makes the apology unnecessary the more you think about it.
And most importantly, Three: Recounting this story in this way didn’t lose me any votes with the Australian people, no matter how implausible my non-recollections were and the fact that there wouldn’t be one normal red-blooded Australian male anywhere who so lacked in testicular tissue that they would even bother apologising to their missus for not remembering what they might possibly not have seen.
Anyway, enough extracts from our Prime Minister’s upcoming autobiography, Lost Moments. I’m sure it’s going to be a riveting read.
But I thought I’d share just that short extract with you, as it seems so pertinent at the moment, coming from Australia’s most famous binge drinker, our very own lip-licking, earwax nibbling nerd of a leader. “I’m Kevin, I think I’m from Queensland and can’t remember why I’m here to help”.
At least he’s not a hypocrite. His history of binge drinking entitles him, as he has in recent months, to declare war on this social scourge that appears to be blighting our society more and more.
His calls come as we are bombarded with suggestions that our state’s entertainment precincts are out of control, that glassings and other violent assaults are on the rise, that drunkenness on our roads is worse than ever and that all sorts of things need to be done to stop these social ills — from earlier closing times for clubs and pubs, for glassware to be removed from such premises, that maybe the alcohol tolerance level for driving should be cut back to dead zero.
Leading this campaign, especially on the licensed premises front, has been the Courier-Mail’s excellent Punch Drunk campaign, one I wholeheartedly endorse. The paper has had some fairly average results with its public campaigns of recent years, so let's hope that Punch Drunk gets them at least an honorable mention at the next annual internal New Limited awards night, of which best public issue campaign is highly coveted. Such matters should never be just about filling up news pages, you know.
And the paper is to be commended for its sheer determination and persistence in making sure the campaign is a success. "Last drinks!" declared their splash a while ago after “another increasingly violent weekend across the state’s entertainment precincts". Senior police were "reeling" over the level of violence. Cops were being attacked at a northside railway station and at a suburban domestic disturbance, although somehow linking violent punter behaviour in bars for those incidences seems akin to blaming your mother for your wife’s looks.
Clearly this campaign needs to succeed - and I wish the Courer well come awards night - but if I have just the one criticism, it's this: why do we all have to pay a price to bring into line the lowest common denominator - the cowardly moron who thrusts a glass into someone's face?
Take enjoying a beer. I’ve made a lot of overseas friends over the years, and I like nothing more than spending a few hours with them, in a beer garden if at all possible. Signors Peroni and Moretti and I get on very well, and I like nothing more than to pour only small amounts of their beer at a time into a frosty glass, a habit picked up in a hot country. It’s also nice to turn their bottle labels towards other drinkers, just to let them know I’m a self-made man who can afford such luxuries of life.
With all the Courier-fuelled publicity over alcohol-fueled violence, such enjoyment is now fast becoming a thing of the past.
I checked out three Valley venues over the weekend. First up was Cloudland and can I say that I quite like what they’ve done there, although I have read somewhere that its interior design has all the appeal of the stomach contents of a post-mortem examination. Just then, actually.
If I had handed over $9 to the friendly barman, I would have been handed a stubbie of Peroni and if I wanted one, what I understand was a tempered glass.
Cloudland had a victory of sorts some months back against the powers-that-be after being put on a naughty-venues list. It seems a glass that had been thrown turned out to be tempered glass. Tempered glass apparently is the only thing ill-tempered people should throw or thrust faceward. So far so good for this sophisticated drinker of the world. Tempered perhaps but it’s still glass.
Around the corner, the Royal George Hotel has gone down a different path. With a big range of draft and bottled beers on offer, I could get a stubbie of Peroni for $7.80 but they would have given me what they called a “rock” glass to drink it with. Rock, the bar lady told me, was not plastic. The perspex you have when you don’t have perspex perhaps sums up her explanation. On the bottom of these glasses are the words “Remedy of Rocks” from which the name obviously springs.
Next door at Ric’s, where all beer sales are stubbie-based, a Peroni would have set me back about $8, again with a plastic, sorry, perspexy sorta container to drink it out of. The only real glass they use is for champagne. Champagne drinkers aparently are refined people who don’t smash glass into someone’s face, regardless of what they may or may not have said.
So all three venues allow me to go and sit down and drink from safe containers filled from a stubbie. But wait on, that’s an untempered stubbie, is it not?
Courier, get onto this immediately! Isn’t this akin to confiscating an airline passenger’s nosehair clippers but then allowing them to eat inflight meals with a steel knife and a fork? Someone’s going to get mightily pissed and smash a stubbie and push in into someone’s gob.
So here’s hoping in an installment of Punch Drunk very, very soon, the Courier calls for all stubbies to be BANNED!
Instead of handing me a stubbie of my favourite foreign lager in future, bar staff will be pouring the whole shebang into a 15oz container, be it plastic, perspex, paper or plain tempered. I'll be forced to sit with my plastic/perspexy/paper/tempered schooner of beer - just like at the Gabba - and try to drink it quickly before it gets too hot.
Then drinking hot beer too fast is going to make me crankier than normal. And then fights will break out and tempers will flare, and before any dinky-di Aussie can say fair shake of the suck bottle, we unruly patrons will be plasticing and perspexing and papering and tempering one another in the face and some new Courier-Mail campaign will have be launched - Off your faces! perhaps - I think it works on several levels? - urging the state government to force licensed venues to serve only single sars and ginger, horehound and root beers in paper cups with paper straws. Over much shorter hours too!
And if we patrons don't learn our lesson then - and please, let's all just calm down here for god's sake! - for such licensed premises to be shut down forever! It should be a great campaign. No-one in the News stable will top it! No other daily newspaper in Brisbane would stand a chance!
And what a great night it will be! The envelope please .... and the winner for best public issue campaign goes to.....
