Poles In Britain
Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in London, there were large numbers of Poles. Every class at school had a few children, who were either Polish or had a Polish father. I also worked with a couple of Polish engineers, who had been part of the large numbers of their countrymen, who had come because of the Second World War.
Last week, I was relating this and other stories to a Pole, who manages my local restaurant. She had no knowledge of what I said, as under the Soviet influence, this important part of Polish and British history was not taught in schools.
Is There A Teetotal Gene?
Thinking about the last post about the about of fluids I’m drinking, I do wonder about the drinking habits of my family.
My father wasn’t a heavy drinker and he probably got through about four small bottles of Guinness or cans of Long Life in a week or so. There was a time, when I used to walk round to The Merryhills in Oakwood to pick it up from their off licence. But that was all stopped, when they said you had to be sixteen (?) to buy alcohol. He would probably be classed these days as a light social drinker.
I am probably that now, as I like a glass of wine or a bottle of beer with a meal. I can’t think the last time, I drunk a pint of anything.
But it hasn’t always been thus. At University, I drunk fairly heavily and I probably did too in my late teens, when I served in The Merryhills. I remember one night, I had thirteen small bottles of Guinness.
C had a similar drinking pattern, in that she got very drunk once just before I met her and probably twice or so, when we were together. She only drunk wine and the occasional whisky. Even as she was dying, she didn’t turn to the bottle, but partly because the drugs she was on had ruined her mouth.
What about my children? By twenty, none of them were drinking and only one ever drunk heavily.
So there seems to be this pattern in the male in my family, where drinking is responsible. I was also introduced to alcohol at an early age of about eight, by my father and I did the same to our children.
But where did this responsible drinking come from.
My paternal grandfather, who I never met, as he died before the Second World War, was a serious drinker and a heavy smoker. He died of pneumonia and asthma, but my father used to tell tales of picking him up at the Conservative Club every night of the week, when he was very much the worse for wear.
My father would always talk about the terrors of alcohol, with reference to his father. I suppose it hit home because I’d never met him and he had died in his forties.
There may or may not be a teetotal gene in my male line, but it’s more down to parental behaviour.
Why Am I Drinking So Much?
Yesterday, I drank heavily all day.
I had three mugs of tea before I left home to do my shopping and then another cup of tea in Carluccio’s with my breakfast.
Before I left for the football, I had a large glass of milk and then I had a tea on the train going to Ipswich.
I didn’t drink anything in the ground, but I did have a small bottle of water coming home, to wash down my Warfarin.
With my supper, I then had two 330 ml. bottles of Celia lager, to wash down the Marks and Spencer’s curry.
A couple of weeks ago, I wouldn’t have been able to drink that amount of fluid, as my throat was rather dry. But just as my gut seems to have improved, it now seems to be the turn of my throat.
Thinking through the last two years since my stroke, I don’t seem to have been able to drink like this. In fact some doctors have told me to limit my fluid intake.
In some ways though, this drinking behaviour has happened before. In the early 1970s, I was working as a consultant at Time Sharing in Great Portland Street and was getting most of my fluid in the Mason’s Arms next door. I remember then thinking, I was drinking too much, so I switched from coffee to tea at home and started to drink masses of the stuff. I felt a lot better.
Then sometime about 1985 or so, I gave up coffee again and started drinking tea, after I thought I’d got a serious mouth infection. I actually, stopped drinking coffee this time, a couple of months ago, as I thought I’d got a similar infection.
So it’s all very strange. At least drinking lots of tea, with one drink a day, isn’t going to do me any harm.
One side effect of my health and possibly all of the drinking, is that for the first time in a year or so, wine now seems to taste like wine again.
To Ipswich For The Football
I was of two minds, whether to go to see Ipswich at home yesterday, as the weather has been so cold and they were playing Middlesborough, which made it look like a defeat. I had even told my son, I wasn’t going.
But the weather was sunny in the morning, so I decided to chance it, especially as there was nothing much else to do outside.
I took the train from Liverpool Street at 13:30 and arrived just in time for the match, after the walk from the station.
But what was wrong. The weather had got cold and Ipswich seemed to be holding their own against a side rated a lot better than they were.
Surely, it couldn’t last, but then Ipswich scored four good goals without reply.
The manager, Mick McCarthy wasn’t even there, as he was at home with flu. So perhaps he should try staying away more often and leave the team in the obviously capable hands of Terry Connor.
Sadly, a lot of the fans stayed away too, but those that did turn up, left with lots of smiles on their faces. Some like me, questioned, whether it was all a dream or the result of too much alcohol.
The players too, played out the last few minutes of the match, as if they had thoroughly enjoyed it.
I think though, when Mick McCarthy returns he has a serious question to answer. How come yesterday, Tommy Smith scored two good goals from superbly taken corners? I can’t remember any goal from a corner this season. Or even a very good dangerous corner. Let’s hope he decides it wasn’t just good luck.
Do You Have To Be Fat And Ugly To Play Rugby These Days?
I watched the England Scotland rugby last night on the iPlayer. It strikes me that the forwards are now getting to be so heavy that they wouldn’t be out of place in sumo wrestling. The backs too, aren’t small any more and would some of the great players of the past like Jeremy Guscott, Phil Bennett, the Underwoods or even Jonny Wilkinson ever get a game these days?
Clive Woodward wasn’t impressed either with the number of players with beards, who could have been extras in a film about the Vikings.
Rugby seems to be going the same route as American football, where size is everything. Parents, I suspect will start to keep their children away from the game, as it will get too dangerous, with all that weight running about. You read reports from the United States, where football is on the rise over the American version, simply because it is a safer game for normal people.
And talking about American football, why is the BBC spending my licence fee, on covering it so much?
The Rail Industry And The Samaritans Get Together To Cut Suicides
One of the most common ways of committing suicide these days, is to jump in front of a train. It happens about 250 times a year. But this article about the Samaritans and the rail industry getting together, shows that everybody is concerned and taking action.
We need more initiatives like this.
Pret A Manger Set A Dangerous Precedent
According to this article on the BBC, Pret A Manger have set a dangerous precedent by caving in to religious pressure, as I believe it will open up companies for all sorts of silly challenges.
When I used to serve in a pub in the 1960s, everybody knew that a Virgin Mary was a non-alcoholic version of the alcoholic Bloody Mary.
A few months ago I saw a sign advertising a Bolly Mary in a restaurant, which was a curry with vodka.
It’s not as though Pret A Manger were using the name on an unwholesome product, laced with lashings of alcohol.
I suspect that quite a few Virgin Mary cocktails have been drunk tonight.
Fyra Replaced By Slow Train To The Hague
This article from the Europe by Rail web site is a lesson to all those politicians and civil servants, who think they understand the transport needs of the general public. This is the first paragraph.
The Belgian Railway authorities this afternoon announced the return of old-style InterCity services from Brussels to stations in the Netherlands. This is to provide some kind of replacement for the short-lived FYRA service, introduced in December 2012 and then withdrawn last month.
The service has actually lasted less than two months.
There is also a sting in the tail of the article.
Meanwhile, coach operators have spotted a gap in this busy cross-border market. One company starts a new express link from Rotterdam to Brussels early next month.
After all, the UK has a large network of long distance coach services that compete with rail, so why not between Brussels and big centres of population in The Netherlands/
Why Are UK Taxpayers Sponsoring Six Nations Rugby?
I very much object to the state-owned zombie bank, sponsoring the Six Nations Rugby. After all, if as a stakeholder in the bank, I wanted a ticket, I wouldn’t be able to get one.
Repeated Spam
When I cleaned out the spam in my blog, a few minutes ago, one of the most common bits of spam, I found was on this post about US sailors being drunk.
It was for various lawyers in Texas, who were offering their services for offences like drunk driving. As the chance, I’d get done for drunk driving in Texas, as much less than hell freezing over, someone is wasting their time and money.
The Anonymous Widower 