That pure Cane Spirit since 1848.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

On the twentieth day of the month I made an amazing resolution. Life in my leisure hours had been strenuous during the whole of September and most of October, so when I awoke with another frightful hangover, I decided emphatically to abstain for the duration. Teetotal.

I had to tell someone.

“Teetotal!” exclaimed Mrs Pouncer, much shocked. “You shouldn’t joke about such things and you in the throes of a hangover. Surely a hair of the dog at dinner?”
“Not one drop.”
“Tut tut Achilles, one glass of wine.” she persisted.
“Not even if it was champagne. My mind’s made up. Drink is a curse and I’m done with it for I can’t stand it.”
“Nobody is asking you to stand it, I’ll get them.” she explained, “I am not without means.”
“It’s no odds,” I said “not another drop will I taste –“
“Stop, stop!” she interrupted, more shocked than ever, “Don’t say anything rash for you might be struck down dead and then you’d be sorry for what you said. Do you mean to tell me that you are going teetotal altogether?”
“Hardly. I’m not that desperate, I wouldn’t care to go all that length, but I’m going to be teetotal until Martinmas.”
“Well I think you foolish Achilles,” she said, “October of all months. Why, summer is hardly over and Christmas is coming. Could you not put it off for a more sensible time?”
“No, October is the month for me, forbye, it’s half over. I tell you I’m thraiped with it.”
“How do you mean?” she asked.
“It’s neither muckling nor mickling.” I explained.
“Are you taking a rise out of me?”
“No, of course not.”
“Well just talk as your mother and father brought you up to talk then. Now sither, we won’t go over the ins and outs of this, but I think I aught to talk to your mother. What do you say to that?”
“I don’t know,” I muttered, hanging my head.
“Well don’t look like you’ve lost a shilling and found a sixpence, you’re not dead yet. Straighten up! Now sither, you’re not a young man, you have a long way to go, but you can’t do it by thisen. Think on.”

She left me feeling she had said something sage and shrewd although I was unable to fathom quite what she was getting at. It took a couple of drinks before I understood.

26 comments:

Mrs Pouncer said...

Strangely enough, I am having lunch with Cllr. Duxbury today; I learned the vernacular from him, you know.

Dr Maroon said...

Good Morning Clarissa,
I have my frozen gelpack on my head and have taken 2 heaped teaspoons of Enos and Andrews each. I am pure dead fizzin'.
AHK

Mrs Pouncer said...

Good, because you were steamboats. Stotious. And the place is a coup.

Dr Maroon said...

Coup is being kind.
I've seen coups closed down by the Sanitary that were tidier than here.
I'm up to high doh. I'm scunnered with the whole jingbang.

Ms Scarlet said...

Would you like a Mule, Dr Maroon?
Sx

Dr Maroon said...

Yes I would, Scarlet my darling. A BIG one.
Shall I tell you of the time I maxed out my advantage platinum card in Frankfurt? Or rather, what I remember of it?
I remember her name of course, and that of the hotel.
No I'll just have that mule, if you don't mind. Sante.
Ax

Kim Ayres said...

Hey, Ack! When did you change your name to "sither"?

Dr Maroon said...

sither is Yorks for see here, I believe, Kim, and thisen is Yorks for yourself, (thyself) do you see?
Are you on Mull? Go into the local sweetshop and ask for a Tobermory tattie.
Ask your wife if you do not believe me.

savannah said...

i take a break from packing to come back to this, sugar? perhaps i should just fritter this day way drinking kirs...xoxo

Kim Ayres said...

No no, I'm back from Mull, which if you'd bothered to look at my blog over the past few days would have been fairly obvious. You can even wish me a belated happy birthday.

Dr Maroon said...

Alas and alack Kim, I have been up and down this great nation of ours putting things to rights.

Savannah,kirs are the empress of drinks! (if the weather is clement)
I wish you sante! Fritter fritter fritter. That's my motto, God help me.
What is this life so full of care,
we have no time to stand and drink?
xox ;)

Eryl Shields said...

I fear for your liver Doc, really I do. But then, what's the use of it now your sanity has gone.

Dr Maroon said...

Eryl! A delight as always. Kim's birthday party eh?
Time was when I would have got an invite too. Ah well.
Lost sanity you say?
Every one who lives any semblance of an inner life thinks more nobly and profoundly than he speaks;
Alas not one of mine (RSL's) but how true. How very true.

Mrs Pouncer said...

You seem to have rallied. Well done! What happened when you maxed out in Frankfurt? Tell me.

xerxes said...

Advice as universal as Mrs P's is not to be absorbed quickly. The important thing is to have the right kind of drink, or drinks, while it sinks in. In this regard, it's not clear what these Moscow Mules have to do with the issue; are they like Rampant Rabbits? In any case, it's better to stick to port, I find, provided it's good.

Dr Maroon said...

licentia poetica Clarissa.
It took another year or two to max it out (that one) but I got the taste for it in Frankfurt. If God spares me, I shall tell you all.

Inkspot, am I not right in saying that thee and me were meant to attend a vertical tasting in the Pentland Room three months past? You baled on me. It may have been someone else, I cannot quite remember.
Unfortunately, I suffered bright red projectile vomit, like, gallons of it, on sedimenty port. I can still drink it, just, but the pleasure has gone for good I'm afraid.

Kim Ayres said...

Tell you what, Ack, invite me to your next birthday and I'll get the lad to put one of his cakes together for you.

Daphne Wayne-Bough said...

How Scottish -- to go ostentatiously on the wagon and then start binge drinking again when you think you've paid your dues to society. Try and be a bit more French, Maroon, which involves being HALF pissed ALL the time instead of intermittently stotious and hungover.

Anonymous said...

Shame about the sediment: it sounds like they hadn't decanted it properly. Well well well, what is the New Club coming to.

Pat said...

When did Mrs P become a northerner? And there are 2 s's in thissen.

Mrs Pouncer said...

I'm still Home Counties to the bone! When I die, they will find Godalming carved on my heart.
(Dr Maroon lifted this dialogue from Billy Liar; I recently re-read it and told him. He thinks he's funny).

Anonymous said...

Daphne's right. A life of high and low dohs is exhausting. Shoot for a range of fah to tee. More easily accomplished with gin than with the uisge.

No Good Boyo said...

Daphne and La Problema are of course right. The Savoyards have a custom of keeping themselves topped up by visiting each others burrows for a glass of red. Sociabilité, they call it.

I suddenly increased my intake on Thursday with three mighty sessions, culminating in telling some bloke in a Cuba Solidarity tee-shirt that I was off to London to fire baby seals at the Rainbow Warrior out of my Trafalgar Day cannon. Perhaps it was Nature's way of compensating for Dr Maroon's sabbatical.

Dr Maroon said...

Kim, get the lad to provide the flour and eggs and suchlike and i'll get the hash. It'll be the best cake he's ever had. He'll probably go straight out and steal a motorbike. Result!

Daphne, well of course i'm half-pissed all the time. (auld alliance) I just top up. Desperate.

Inkspot! So it WAS you. To be fair, this was not at the New Club but one Christmas some time ago. It was like a fountain. I made it outside, just. In the morning, I checked, (as you do) and all there was, was a perfect circle of red sand!
Pat, not according to Waterhouse there aren't. "Thisen" he says.

Clarissa,

Sam, a sort of mezzo pissedness? Hey! It could just work!

Boyo, when I was a very young boy I had a sporran covered in baby seal fur. The only item of the whole jingbang that I liked. All the girls wanted to stroke it.

Mrs Pouncer said...

What? You can't just leave my name hanging there. Everyone else got a comment of some description. I got bupkis.

Dr Maroon said...

Clarissa,
where you are concerned I am like Moses before Pharoah. Tonguetied.
A shmuck. And yet, I shall have victory.
AHK