REASONS TO BE BEERFULL..

Anyone who drinks will tell you that life without it would be shit. I regularly wake up in the middle of the night in a full-blown fit of fear at the thought of prohibition being introduced into Ireland and I’m selling my body and the bodies of my mates in return for a shot of beer in some dingy cellar in a house in Sandymount. I hate Sandymount. So I’ve made a list of reasons why I wanna hang in the AlcoHall of Life.

1) The symptoms of a flu can be put on hold with the help of booze. They’ll come back when you stop boozing but at least you get to put them away for a while.

2) Animals are cuter after a few drinks. Give me a few cans and put me in a room with a dog and I’ll be gushing over the dog and making plans for a future with it-making empty promises about runs on the beach and calling over some time with a brand new and bouncier ball.

3) Children are cuter after a few drinks. Give me a few cans and ask me to babysit and I will find cuteness in the most un-cute of babies. I will find beauty in ugly ones and humour in boring ones. My nieces and nephews (the ones that can talk) have a saying “If Auntie Carol smells of booze, then Auntie Carol finds us bearable.”

4) My skin looks so much clearer. I know this is down to beer goggles. People forget that if your eyesight calls for some beer goggles after a few drinks, that they also apply to yourself when you look in the mirror.

5) In my sober world I hate confrontation but when I inhabit Tipsy Town I can take on any mutha fuckha. I may not win arguments in T.T. but can start them and isn’t it better to be involved than not involved at all?

6) I’m a better dancer.

7) When I fall it doesn’t hurt. I’ve fallen off bikes, fallen off walls, fallen out of shoes, fallen down stairs even fallen out of a car and if it wasn’t for the protective layer that enough alcohol creates all of those falls would have hurt. Even my ego was protected. If I gently trip in private and on a sober basis, it can crush my spirit for days.

8) I would never see most of my friends if I didn’t drink as it would just be extremely awkward sitting in a cafe chit chatting about real topics of conversation with them. Some of my friends who I have known for years and years, I have never shared a coffee with, not even an Irish one as you can’t get drunk on an Irish coffee. Even if you make them yourself and you’re in charge of the whiskey measures.

9) It’s scary as fuck how your life can change after a few drinks. And even though this can have disastrous effects, I’d have nothing much else to write about.

Last Resort, Port

I have this theory that I cant get drunk on vodka. The only flaw with my theory is that I give up on vodka as I feel like I get nothing off it so I actually dont know if I can get drunk on it as I dont put the time, money or effort into it. I’m so tired I cant finish this post.

Apologies

BEER GIGGLES

BEER GIGGLES: when you find someone funnier because you’re drunk.

I realised recently that I spent a hefty chunk of my life with a man because I was under the influence of alcohol for all of our waking moments. It’s easily done-a few glasses of wine after work to wind down which lead to a bottle or two of the stuff- next thing you know it’s the weekend and it’s perfectly acceptable to be drunk for all of that.

As the saying goes “Love is Blind” well our love was blind drunk. And what kept me returning to this mans arms was that I thought he was the funniest man ever- I thought he sweated humour and that his words were such comedy gold, they could have been melted down and made into statues.

The reality arrived one morning-I think it was Good Friday and we hadn’t stocked up on supplies. He made me breakfast. I ate it. He told some stories that had obviously received laughter somewhere along the line and he looked at me impatiently as he waited for my usual cackle to leave my horse face. I can’t do a fake laugh so he asked was I ok? I replied “yeah just a bit hungry” which he knew was a blatant lie for two reasons:

1)I had just eaten breakfast
2)Hunger was never a feeling expressed during our relationship as alcohol always suppressed it.

I freaked out internally as we sat on the couch watching TV and he laughed at any juvenile shite that came on. I got up and stood by the kitchen sink drinking water and watched as pennys dropped with every realisation that this man was not funny-the drink in me had made me just think he was.

He asked if I was OK. I said “yeah-just thirsty”- in quite a defeated yet high pitched tone. He knew I was lying for two reasons:

1)I had already consumed so much water I couldn’t possibly still be thirsty
2)I was lying.

Our relationship crumbled soon after when we had a few sober DVD nights and he told jokes even Hal Roche wouldn’t steal. After that Good Friday wake up call, I didn’t even try to reciprocate his joke-telling as when you hear “yeah you said that one before” sober, you don’t have the shield of alcohol to protect you from the mortifying fact that you repeat yourself.

The relationship died, like all of his non alcohol fuelled jokes. You may call me shallow for judging a man solely on his humour but if you can’t laugh in a relationship then you can’t laugh at things like occasional impotence, accidental overdoses and huge bouts of poverty.

So to those in love take drink or drugs or both out of the equation and see if you stand the test of time (an hour or two).

If you’re married reading this and getting worried. Well it’s too late- chin chin.

(my ex won’t be reading this as last I heard he went up to Saratoga where his other horse naturally won)

Think every drink is a standard drink?

……think again.

This is a slogan from a drink awareness ad that I saw on the dart recently, made by some drink awareness company. The fact that I’m writing about it here means that the advertisement has worked on me, if it’s sole purpose was to get me thinking.

Because that it did. Who are these people who live amongst us and think that every drink is a standard drink?

I don’t want my drinks to be standard. In the dictionary which I just referenced standard means the following:

“an average or normal requirement, quality, quantity, level, grade etc”

OR

“a grade of beef immediately below good”

So fuck standard- to me a drink is a grade of beef two levels above super. A drink isn’t average or normal-who would want a pint of normal, a pint of beige, a twinset liquidized. If every drink was standard why bother? Why go to all the trouble of ordering your option from a wonderful barman, pay for it and then go to even more trouble bringing the glass or bottle to your lips and swallowing it all.

Would the chat up line “Can I buy you a drink?” work if the word standard was before the word drink? Maybe. For those people who think that every drink is a standard drink.

Yes I’ve had beer that has tasted like moth dust, yes I’ve had wine that has made me feel like it was bringing on an early menopause. I have even guzzled Ritz many more times than twice which without doubt can only be described as tasted like cream crackers and butter that have been left in a schoolbag for too long….

I’ve drank drinks that’s made me cry, lie and almost bi. I’ve consumed alcohol that’s made me dance and had a drink that made me unearth beauty in something where no beauty was to be found.

I even had a drink in Prague that made me hallucinate for hours.

But standard they were not.

Enjoy alcohol. Responsibly?

HORNY HANGOVERS

You wake, the hangover lands and on top of that you realise you’re the horniest you’ve been since your last hangover. What is it about hangovers that makes the horniness hornier? The thing is your usually at your ugliest, your mouth/skin reeks of booze and you want to get sick, so how could you possibly get someone to kill that horniness. A scientific report, that I just made up, has stated that Youporn gets the most traffic on a Sunday morning in Ireland. So some people are obviously killing the horniness themselves.

But what if you have to leave the house with this burden. When I’m suffering a HH there is a thin line that I’m gyrating over between talking to someone and pouncing on someone. I once had to walk down O’Connell Street with a HH. I spotted a huge obese American man wearing a sweat clad T-Shirt two sizes too small, his hairy belly peering out. I thought to myself, “I might”. I walked on and saw a ridiculously unkempt wino wearing piss stained trousers and the yellowest hair I’d ever seen. I thought to myself “yeah, maybe I would.”

I walked on and saw an old man in his eighties struggling to walk with his zimmer-frame, dried drool on his face and a lost look in his crusty eyes and I thought “mmm, maybe… I’d probably have to go on top though”. I walked on and saw a couple in their fifties arguing over Clery’s shopping bags and I thought to myself “mmm maybe, if it would add to their marriage and not cause any unnecessary trouble”.

I kept walking and saw a toothless homeless guy under a bank machine and thought “maybe, wash him down first”. I kept walking and spotted a young handsome guy in his twenties outside Trinity wearing a Cork jersey and thought to myself “no fucking way I’m not that horny”.

PUB FOOT

I suffer from Pub Foot. It doesn’t happen in every pub just the ones I really don’t want to leave. What happens is I hear the words “right will we head?” and my feet start curving in and I can’t stand up straight. This is not visible to those in my company or even to myself as it’s purely a psychological ailment-but it prevents me from replying “right let’s go so” and instead I make up excuses to stay. If I’m with female company I suddenly start pointing out things that might make them stay “hey check out that ride at the bar-ye’d make a lovely couple-I know your married-to my Dad and your my mother…oh look today’s newspaper….

If I’m with male company I point out things that will make them stay “hey look at all that drink behind the bar”.

The reasons for my Pub Foot are many and varied:
-I like the music being played
-I like that music isn’t being played
-I like that the barman is so friendly & doesn’t treat me as if I’ve just asked him to father a child and that there’s a history of triplets in my family.
-I like that the bargirl is friendly and doesn’t treat me like I’ve just asked her long term live in boyfriend to father a child.
-There is a couple fighting nearby and I can hear it all.
-There is a man sobbing to the barman and I can hear it all
-The toilets are clean
-The toilets aren’t jam packed with crying girls trying to outsob each other with tales of heartache & bulimia.
-The bar person puts a lemon in my budweiser without saying “are you sure-what da fuck?”
-The pub is so loud its impossible to converse & therefore I can sit, sip and stare without interruption.
-I’m afraid to go home and be alone with my thoughts.

Enjoy alcohol. Responsibly. Yours. Carol.

A B C Dehydration

Isn’t dehydration a bastard? Now I’m not talking about the dehydration that kills hundreds of thousands of people every year in third world countries due to a lack of running water, I’m talking about dehydration due to alcohol consumption. The scene is all too familiar. You throw yourself fully clothed into bed and fall asleep. Then you wake a few hours later so thirsty you can’t even say the word thirsty because the “S” in the word doesn’t fit well with the dryness of your mouth. You’re after having a dream where you were splashing around naked in a lake of lucozade which doesn’t help matters. When I have consumed a particularly large amount of alcohol I have this reoccurring thirsty dream where I am sitting on a donkey in a field in Spain squashing oranges and lemons off my forehead and drinking the juice as it drips down my face.

So you wake and your first thought is “oh my fuck I need some water”. Then the desperation for some fluids spirals out of control “jesus christ I am going to die without water, fuck me, I am so painfully thirsty I wonder is there any water in the room.” U search the room, finding an old mouldy cup of coffee. You take a swig but it’s not the same as a nice cold glass of water.”God I would do anything for some water now, but I can’t go downstairs to get some because that will wake me up fully and I wont be able to get back to sleep. Oh my God I need water. Oh my God I really need water. I wish the roof was leaking I could drink that even if there were just a few occasional drops, that would do me.”

You pick up an old hot water bottle and contemplate drinking that but the plasticy smell puts you off. You lay back on your pillow, hoping tears wont form because that will dehydrate you more. Then you have a Eureka moment. “I know, I’ll just work really hard on creating spit and I’ll swallow that.”

Result.

A Hangover Make-Over

I knew yesterday that I was going to be hungover this morning. I filled every last part of my bloodstream with wine and then proceeded to flood my brain with vodka’s mixed with west coast coolers just to be sure. I find if you mix a spirit with alcohol its far more enjoyable, even if that alcohol is only a measly girlie 4%. I arrived home, did my usual pathetic action of getting a glass of water to put beside the bed to remain untouched, until it gets knocked over in the morning and just when I need it most-to help remove my tongue from the roof of my mouth.

So on waking this morning what I did to stop the hangover from entering my world was I provoked a tooth that has been playing up recently and now I have an unimaginable toothache that is consuming all my being and not leaving any room for a hangover to take control. I don’t have the usual white wine headache or feel in anyway nauseous. I just have one of the most painful toothaches imaginable. I’m actually crying as I’m writing this but they are different tears, not hungover tears of cringe and self pity, just unadulterated tears of severe pain. I know, I should probably take a pain killer. But if I do then the hangover will slink into my day and ruin it more than this unbearable toothache will- bringing its usual truckload of depression with it. So I’ll struggle on and when I get the inkling that there is no chance of a hangover putting its grubby hands all over my body, then I’ll pop two nurofen and say goodbye to the ache in my tooth.

THE MORNING AFTER KILL

So its the morning after The Royal Wedding. Being the sympathetic person that I like to think I am, I often find myself putting myself into other peoples shoes to see what life is like for those less fortunate than me. So this morning I decided to put myself into the dainty shoes of the Queens new grand daughter in law, Catherine. I get the impression that like me, she may suffer the odd alcohol induced blackout or two on a weekly basis. How do I get this impression, well you see its all to do with the eyes and composure. People always assume that if you blackout with alcohol then you must be falling around the place and puking down your shins. But no, like Catherine herself, a blackout can be dignified and regal. It’s as if the lights are on in Buckingham Palace, but not even a corgi is at home. And on close study of some past pictures of her coming out of nightclub I’ve concluded that she blacks-out.

So I imagine the Queens Grand Daughter in Law, or G.I.L. as one may call her if they forgot her new title, had a few too many flutes of champagne yesterday and cant remember anything after the Church. “I knew we should have let the Daily Mail into the after party so at least their unbridled reporting may give me some inkling as to where my tiara went and who was the last fucker to try on Diana’s old ring coz it aint on my finger William”. After tearing her tongue once more from the roof of her dried crusty mouth she frantically rings Pippa.

G.I.L: Pippa, oh God my fuckin head I can’t remember much after the Church.

Pippa: Yeah you were fairly well on it.

G.I.L.: But you were supposed to mind me for fuck sake, and how come you sound remarkably fresh. Were you even drinking yesterday?

Pippa: I had two glasses of wine with the meal.

G.I.L.: You fucking bitch, your always showing me up in front of Willies family, first the dress to steal all the headlines, which by the way I had money on with Mum that you got arse implants, Mum reckons you used one of the balloon blower upper thingys for it. Whatever about hogging the limelight but then you let me get locked in front of everyone on my big day and I don’t even remember it.

Pippa: I’m sick of minding you Kate, you’ve got servants now to mind you. I was too busy trying to nab my own prince. By the way I could feel David Beckhams eyes burrowing their way into my ass when I was walking up the aisle.

G.I.L.: Your such a bitch. I’m going to have to pretend now on honeymoon with Willie that I remember the whole day. I supposed I better get used to nodding seeing as I’m in for a lifetime of it now. Did I shift anyone?

Pippa: No but you were saying that Elton John got pissed off with you because you kept plaguing him to write you a song because he wrote one for Diana and that he said those circumstances were very very different.

G.I.L.: Cringe cringe. Do you know where my dress is? I woke up in a Beefeaters hat and a pair of Willies grey jocks.

Pippa: As I said I was too busy trying to nab myself some royalty

G.I.L.: Some sister you are

Pippa: Some princess you are

Kate hangs up the phone and realises that just like Diana was, she too will be lonely. She also realises that her headache subsides when she takes off the Beefeaters hat.

Drinking Kills (your ability to write posts for blogs)

I can’t write posts when I’m drunk. I can send cringey texts and vicious email but I can’t contribute to this labour of love if I am drunk. I am sorry to disappoint those who thought that this piece might be a glimpse into the mind of a pissed pisshead. Apologies. This is just an in-depth look into the mind of a pisshead pre or post pissedness. The thing is if I was writing when drunk it would be sad. I don’t drink alone so it would be as if I was using my one blog subscriber as company and it would look like Carol had a drink problem, when really its drink that has a Carol problem.

So I didn’t find The One at the weekend. I tried Corona, a cheeky little Chablis, some Budweiser, loads of Vodka topped off by a few hot ports in a golf club, because they were the only things that would quell my nauseous stomach.

So the quest continues to find The One, the perfect drink who I will settle down with and hopefully die with. But not tonight, or tomorrow night. In fact today writing this I feel I never want to drink again. But I will continue. If just for my one blog subscriber Matt.