The war on fake news

As usual about this time of year, I am sitting in a hotel room, thinking that this must be very much what it is like to be a foreign correspondent in general and a war correspondent in particular.  Except of course it’s not.  The hotel room is in central London and so unless I have undergone an unexpected and unnoticed transformation of nationality, I’m not a foreign correspondent.  Having said that, English does appear to be the minority language here in the hotel, a consequence of the continued popularity of London as a tourist destination, a weak pound making it even more popular and lots of worried Europeans getting in a visit while they can before a fucking huge fence goes up all round Britain, or something.  But as has been stated before on this blog, there is something about staying in a hotel room and having a laptop open on the desk that suggests something of the war correspondent.

Previously, I was in the happy position of exaggerating the foreignness of places when the most exotic thing about them was that they had not one but two Chinese take aways.  I was also in the happy position of inventing the ‘war’ element of the correspondent bit.  And actually, as anyone who has read this post this far will know, inventing the ‘correspondent’ element too.  Sadly, this is no longer true.

Of what war do I speak?  Certainly, the next few hundred or few thousand words could be about the war on terror, a war where the front line is on our streets, or actually on our high street.  Various nutters with pokey things have made right nuisances of themselves in 2017, but they don’t really deserve a mention here.  If you want one defining image of the war on terror, it’s that bloke fleeing from the attack at Borough market, still holding his pint.  When the little fuckers roll up in a tank, we might put our drinks down.  Until then, cheers!

Nor is it the war that is being fought over inappropriate touching, usually by celebrities, occasionally of people who wish to become celebrities.  This is not a war as such, merely a continuation of the battle of the sexes, which appears to have somewhat hotted up again.  The view from the G&P trenches (not, you will note, the view from the feminine equivalent, which I guess would be ‘Lady and Spectator’ or ‘Lady and Person Responsible For Cakes’ or something) is that that bastard Wienerstiener has ruined it for all of us.  Basically, if I call somebody ‘Love’ in the office, I’m fucked.  Not that I ever would.  I call everyone ‘chaps’.  ‘Chaps’ is a gender neutral form of address.  In all my tears of using it, I only ever had one person comment that one of those addressed was a woman, or a chappess.  The person complaining was not the lady in question, because she was a bloody good chap and would not do that sort of thing.  No, it was, I stringly suspect, the same person who complained when I brought doughnuts into the office for a treat that I had neglected to provide a fruit alternative.  FFS.

The war in question is the war on fake news, or as Fox News calls it, ‘news’.

London is, of course, the home of the BBC, a corporation with correspondents both foreign and domestic, both war and peace.  The BBC is funded not, as you might imagine, by flogging episodes of ‘Top Gear’ to China and a TARDISload of ‘Doctor Who’ merchandise, but through the license fee, which everyone is happy to pay even if the BBC only ever broadcast ‘Blue Planet II’.  That alone would be worth it and you won’t find anyone that will contradict that because nobody wants to look like an idiot in public.  Recent voting patters demonstrate that people are happy to be idiots in the privacy of a booth, but in public, unwise social media posts aside, it’s a different matter.

Because everyone pays their license fee, two mind-sets simultaneously evolve.  They can be held by the same person at the same time.  The first is that evey license fee payer feels that they have the right to criticise any aspect of the BBC.  The second is that when anyone who does not pay a license fee tries to criticise the BBC, they defend it like Horatio defends a bridge.

Case in point.  The BBC loves to cover extreme weather events by sending presenters with usually immaculate hair and make up to report live from the scene.  This usually involves wellies but it’s not unusual to see a BBC presenter in a North Face parka, screaming into a microphone held to their lips, trying to make themselves heard over the screaming wind that is driving the rain into their face.  So essentially you have a BBC reporter doing their bit from where was until yesterday a busy high street, but is now the Little Puddling Water Recreation Centre.

Then you have one of those masochistic BBC programmes where the viewer gets to make their point, usually that a presenter has been too rude, or too Tory, or too Leftie, or too female, or too black.  And the complaint in question, that the BBC reporter was giving advertising to a particular brand of anorak.

Now, the benefit of this sort of attitude is that there is no other broadcaster of news, in the world, with such rigorous oversight.

Which is why fake news does not happen on the BBC.

Admittedly, some of the correspondents and editors can give an opinion on something that is about as palatable as a Bush Tucker Trial, but that’s part of the fun and it all balances out.

The problem now is that the BBC is reporting on certain individuals, naming no names, who lie, and because the BBC has a duty to report, those lies get broadcast.  It’s like retweeting fake news.

And that’s the soft end.  The hard end is the truly terrifying boiler rooms in malign states that are pumping out fake news clickbait.

By the way, I can assure you that G&P is not written in a vast warehouse just outside of Minsk.  If it was, it would be so much more better writtener.

Every screen is the front line in the war on fake news.  And right now, I’m not sure who is winning.  Certainly, fake news has gained considerable ground.  It used to be that fake news was confined to the playground and the pub.  Not any more.  Thanks to malicious minds taking the innocent internet, that used to be used for such lofty pursuits as porn and bickering about Star Trek, and using it to drip poison into the ear of Joe Public, fake news is a Key Opinion Influencer.

Maybe though things will change.  Fake news is getting easier to identify.  Everyone should have the fake news equivalent of one of those aircraft spotter posters showing the silhouette of enemy aeroplanes, except that they would show the signature shapes of fake news, such as ‘anything that you really want to believe is true, probably isn’t’, or a picture of a fox.

And those that peddle fake news need to be identified too.  It’s a pity that the entire established media hate Facebook because they fear it so, and also a pity that facebook does appear to be a home for fake news.  But so what, who cares?  The Internet is the wild fucking west, there are no rules.  And really, what sort of person believes something they read on Facebook.  Unless it’s about kittles.

Trusted sources, that’s what it’s all about.  Like the BBC.  Never knowingly fake.

Finally, a note on the hotel.  It’s in the centre of London which is a big area I admit, as any area connected to the tube might make that claim, but this really is, there are more busses and cabs than cars.  The hotel is discreet but posh, and judging by the fluffyness of the towels is luxurious.  My room is on the first floor, meaning that the window, with views of a typically cosmopolitan London street, is a few fee above the windows of the top deck of the busses that stop outside at the lights.  Nobody has waved yet.  The bar looks like the sort of place a foreign correspondent might frequent in that it sells cocktails, which is hard liquor mixed with more hard liquor or, if you’re a lady, some fruit.  There was also what appeared to be a fashion shoot going on.  Rude to stare.

Brexiteers would loath this place.  It’s full of foreigners, coming over here, boosting our economy.  And that’s just the staff.

Sober January? Oh do please fuck off

G&P is the first to admit that the benefits of sobriety, in the short, medium, and long term are inarguable.  The benefits of inebriety are mostly confined to tolerating situations and people, and even then it’s a stretch.  Still, drinking must have some benefits, otherwise why would so many people do it, in so many different forms, so often and for so long?
Having reread that last sentence, one could well ask the same about smoking, the point of which really is lost on me unless it’s to satisfy an addiction.
People drink for many reasons, to relax, because of social convention, or because their universe is a lot better when observed through the bottom of a pint glass that was until recently full of cider.
Drinking, obviously, has its drawbacks.  Too much alcohol prevents one from enjoying many of life’s pleasures.  However, in fairness, it also allows one to enjoy drinking, and beer gardens, and starchy snacks, in a way that just does not happen in Soberland.
Here at G&P, it’s fair to say that we like a drink, by which we mean booze.  We love the idea of situation specific booze most of all, with port on Christmas Eve when listening to a Ghost Story for Christmas, fizz on Christmas Morning, wine with lunch, and spirits throughout the Yule period.  Being visited by spirits at Christmas should not be the exclusive preserve of repentant Dickens characters.  This indulgence, one might argue, is the springboard for sober January.
But it’s not just Christmas that provides opportunities for booze.  Any visit to the theatre requires a gin and tonic during the interval.  Social occasions increasingly rely on fizz.  Wine is appropriate with dinner and lunch on Sunday, although tea remains the only beverage to drink while having a bacon roll, champagne is an option when enjoying fish and chips.  Keith Waterhouse was right about that, at least.  During the summer one can enjoy long drinks, such as a two litre bottle of Strongbow.  And of course the cocktail is the perfect way to mark the transition from dressing gong to dinner gong.
Booze has yet to go out of fashion.
Sobriety is, increasingly, becoming fashionable.
It used to be that the only long term sober people were recovering, lapse free, alcoholics.  Now we witness people giving up booze for a month, ‘going sober for October’.  They profess to feel good, sleep better and have more energy, and yet the day after Halloween they are back on the sauce like an HP quality assurance taster.
January is both the best and the worst month to go sober.  Best because after the Yule period you are probably ready for a few days off the sauce, worst because January is longer than a few days.
If you do decide to go sober, get ready for a long haul through some long dark evenings.  You may not be going to bed when it’s still light out, but that’s only because it’s winter, it’s still seven thirty by the time you are in your jim jams and ready for bed.  This is because sober television is no fun.
If you do decide to go sober, please keep it to yourself.  Vegetarians and their militant wing, vegans, have recently found the confidence to start talking to people about diet at barbeques.  And yet any chap taking a healthy bite of his bacon cheeseburger, while being talked at by some lettuce licker, will notice the way that any veggievegan’s gaze will be drawn to the glorious grease dribbling down your chin, and disquietingly wonder if the fellow is about to crack and lick about 8,000 calories of beefy goodness from your chops.
Similarly, any fellow doing dry January, and letting you know it will, if you are both in a pub, be looking at you taking deep, refreshing, draughts of your pint like a desert dweller regarding an oasis that does both still and sparkling water, and has a lemon grove attached.
Self control is of course laudable.  G&P recommends periods of sobriety, extending to lunchtime in normal circumstances and prolonged if operating heavy machinery, such as a 747.
Naturally, G&P recommends drinking if flying in one.

Write on Beer II

I’m writing this in a hotel room.

It occurs to me that in my 2014 blog entry about writing on beer, I described the fiction writing process.  If I recall correctly, drinking ‘wifebeater’, as Stella is loving known, in a pub in the daytime drove me to outline a not-entirely-original idea of a series of books based on a martial family.  The idea has, ahem, never got beyond development stage.

But it did make me think that I was unjust in entirely overlooking a class of writers who drink, and drink beer.  Journalists, particularly, war correspondents.

This may not be entirely unconnected with the fact that I am currently drinking warm beer from a bottle in a hotel that is in a place I have never visited before and which I arrived at after dark.  If I had arrived in a Hercules transport firing off flares to distract surface-to-air missiles and then jumped from the tailgate thingy to a dusty desert airstrip, the picture could not have been more complete.  I am even toting my laptop, an ageing Apple Powerbook G4 that weighs about as much as a fucking manual typewriter (maybe even less because although those old Imperials may have been made out of steel and gravity, they didn’t have batteries that are apparently constructed from the same stuff they make black holes out of), in an canvas camera case.

An Imperial is probably better at stopping a WWII sniper round (other ballistic armour includes a notebook, but nothing beats a Bible) but I’m betting my Powerbook could be used to swat away incoming up to an including depleted uranium rounds.

As it is, I’m in Salisbury, but can assure you I am very much on the front line of civil unrest, as the town had its Christmas festival thingie tonight and there are loads of road closures and angry motorists.  Nobody has let rip a burst of AK47 fire from the back of their Toyota pickup, yet, but I noticed some pretty serious tutting going on in at least one Range Rover, which might sound innocent enough but to those in the know is as sure an indication that things are about to kick off as that fuse opening credit sequence in Mission Impossible.

Anyway, drinking warm beer (‘Brooklyn Lager’, got hooked on the stuff in NYC), is redolent of foreign correspondents.  That and secretly despising the locals, the warm beer selling fuckers.  Not really, big shout out to Salisbury, woo hoo! love your Tesco Metro).

Bars, back in the day before wars moved to places where the combatants don’t drink alcohol (hence, you know: wars), were places where you went to speak to the generals, the gun runners, the generals selling guns to the gun runners, also freedom fighters, terrorists, and other journalists.

Especially journalists.  Especially the Wall Street Journal correspondent shagging the local consulate girl, because he had great local information and because he was always, always, C.I.A. and hence could always afford to get a round in.

Also, anyone freshly arrived off the ‘plane who had British or American cigarettes.

Of course, that was back in the days when journalists stole stories off of one another and fact checked by getting in a jeep, and thought nothing of driving three days through swamp and minefields, rather than getting their stories off Twitter and their ‘fact’ ‘check’ off of Wikipedia.

A lazily rotating ceiling fan, so much like the rotor blades of a Huey, curling cigarette smoke (Christ, those were the days), cigar smoke, pipe smoke (Telegraph correspondent) and booze, and sweat.  Because the great thing about war in the tropics is that you sweat the stuff out as fast as you can drink it.  You could sit in the bar at the Choi Choi Mai from lunchtime to deadline and never have to go to the loo, thanks to the climate.

Not like now, tweeting ‘being shot at, LOL’ from the front while running like hell for the rear.

If being shot at in a war zone is an occupational hazard, but you are not a soldier and are hence allowed to booze, then who wouldn’t reach for a beer or two with lunch?

A sobering thought

Christmas is a time of traditions both old and new.  It’s a time of traditions that seem ancient but are actually relatively modern, being that Victoria and Albert essentially invented the modern Christmas, she by having an enormous family to avoid over the Yule period, he by importing Tutonic ideas such as having a Christmas tree indoors instead of in the forest, wood or local car park being sold by Scouts, although thinking about it that last example may be a modern thing.

The idea of a winter celebration of some kind is an ancient one, the idea of a celebration of the birth of Christ is, if not ancient, then at least old rather than antique or vintage.

The practice of panic buying groceries as if you were preparing for a long sea voyage, or stocking your bunker in the event of an apocalypse, just because the shops are closed for one single sodding day, is very much a modern phenomenon.  Not for nothing do Ocado charge customers for Christmas delivery slots, they need the money to pay for all the extra deliveries they have to do, as the entire contents of one van now equates to one delivery.

I rather enjoy Christmas grocery shopping.  It’s pleasant to plan a menu and, for somebody who has the notion that ‘food is love’ as firmly embedded in their mangled excuse for a psyche as I have, buying many nuts for people to enjoy is the closest thing to a public display of affection my repressed self is likely to get.

There are things that one buys only at this time of year, specifically to consume over the festive period.  Not just Brussels sprouts (brussel?  Brussels sounds odd.  No, it’s Brussels, I looked it up.  But they grow those things all over, shouldn’t it be like Champagne and cheese and pork pies and kippers and so on, you can only call a thing a thing if it’s produced in a specific location, like real porn only comes from the Netherlands?  No matter.) and turkey, which if they were tasty we’d all year round, but nuts that require cracking, dates, and fancy cheese.  I love buying a cheeseboard for Christmas.  It’s the one thing you unwrap knowing there won’t be a disappointment.  Cheese is so versatile, you can snack on it at any time, and you can pair it with other festive treats, like pickles, and booze.

The Christmas booze shop is a thing of wonder.  This is when you pair not booze with food, but booze with the company you will be keeping over Christmas.  Planning is essential.

You need to think of others at Christmas.  Specifically, for the purposes of this exercise, you need to think of giving them booze and keeping on giving them booze to make sure that if they are good company they become great company, and if they are poor company they are practically sedated.  Why do you think booze was free for so long on long haul flights?  Passengers are a lot easier to deal with when they are happy or sleepy, or both.  This is the time of year when you buy strong continental lager, brewed under license on an industrial estate in Milton Keynes, in cans, just to keep your student age relatives and adult friends and relations who should know better happy.  It’s the time of year when you buy port, because old ladies like it an you do too, especially when paired with cheese or with reading an M R James story on Christmas Eve.

It’s the time of year when you pick up a bottle of advocaat, think better of it and then replace it.  It’s the time of year when you think about buying a mulled wine kit before wisely recognising that if you want a warm beverage at Christmas, a cuppa will do.

It’s the time of year when your shopping bags can clink on the way to the car and nobody judges you.  Make the most of it.

Enjoy, this is the time of year when it is acceptable to pop a cork at breakfast and traditional to mix with spirits even if your name isn’t Scrooge.

Write on cocktails

Famously, Laurie Lee, one of the nation’s most beloved novelists, wrote ‘on wine’.  Whether or not he was ever drunk in charge of a typewriter is unclear but one has to entertain the possibility that, as a poet, he typed without due care and attention.  He did his writing in the Greek Islands, presumably because in the days before bargain booze, affordable New World wines or even Blue Nun, this was the only way he could become sufficiently inebriated to welcome the Muse should she come to visit.  Also, proximity to Mt Parnassus may have helped.

Rock stars smoke, inject, inhale and presumably occasionally insert for inspiration.  Writers drink.  Christ alone knows why, as excessive booze normally leads to feelings of alienation from the world and a profound sense of being under-appreciated and misunderstood, all of which is achievable through the simple act of publishing a slim volume of verse.  Alcohol also inhibits early morning creativity, and certain writers famously were at their creative peak at first light.  Presumably this meant they could post the latest chapter of their novel off to their publishers at eleven in the morning on their way to the pub.

However, in the spirit of enquiry G&P is embarking on a five-part special to explore the effects of various types of alcohol on writing, beyond those of not being able to remember that fantastic idea for a novel you had last night (something about a boy wizard?) just before you passed out, or not being able to decipher the notes scrawled on a beermat that could be a poem, or somebody’s e mail address.

We conclude with...cocktails!

There are two types of cocktails, divided along gender lines, like the literature that they inspire.

First, let's deal with cocktails where alcohol is mixed with soft drinks and fruit drinks to the extent that the drinker can no longer taste the alcohol.  This is quite different to the drinker no longer feeling the effects of the alcohol, unless the drinker is the sort of person who lifts up her shirt to show the room her bra after three glasses of seven up anyway.  Fruity, or 'long' cocktails were invented with the express purpose of getting ladies drunk without their confronting the reality of downing hard liquor.  If Elizabeth Bennett drank cocktails, the woman would hammer Long Island Ice Teas.  It's fruity fun in a bonnet.

Honourable exception must be made for cocktails like Cuba Libre (rum and coke if you're an American), where liquor is mixed with a soft, often sweet, sometimes fizzy, drink.  If the drink is made correctly, that is equal parts spirit and mixer, then it's not for the bonneted classes.

Likewise, certain classics are exempt from appearing on the 'girls night out' two for one laminated (for easy cleaning) cocktail list at your local cocktail lounge or Wetherspoons.  These are gin and tonic because of its medicinal properties in warding off malaria and sobriety in an increasingly torrid world, and also Bloody Mary or, as many refer to it, 'ahh, thank God, breakfast!'.  The Bloody Mary is at the extreme end of the exemption scale, not only is it a famously tasteless spirit mixed with an overpowering and sweet juice (although vegetable, not fruit, so it's practically a smoothie) and then further disguised with a fish based condiment, but served correctly it also has half a hedgerow shoved into the glass.

Cocktails with things protruding from them are an indication that this is a ladies' beverage.  Again, there are exceptions, if the glass in front of you is home to, as well as something smelling alarmingly of strawberry, either a cherry or a lit sparkler, then you had better be wearing a sparkly dress when consuming it.  If it has an olive, olives or any other form of vegetation that nobody honestly eats for pleasure, then it's a mans' drink.

Which brings us to the second sort of cocktail.  This is where one sort of spirit is mixed with another sort of spirit and served in a special sort of glass, usually a small one, for the very good reason that knocking back three trebles in thirty minutes is something that is usually only done by on-duty darts players, yet when liquor is presented thus in a dainty glass, it's socially acceptable.

Mens' cocktails taste like petrol.  Although the second one always tastes better.  This is because the idea of what Matt Groening described as a 'sophisticated adult beverage' is to remind you that you, an adult male, are having a drink.  The taste is not unlike the first drink of beer you had as a child, awful.

That's why these drinks are often served chilled, if your tongue is numb enough then you may be able to drink your first one quickly enough to make more seem like a great idea, without feeling the need to rinse your mouth out with Irn Bru and move onto something with a cherry in it.

They are also served up with dashes of things.  This is to make something that tastes toxic taste even more toxic, but in an aromatic way.  Bitters are sophistication in a bottle.

The purpose of olives is to line the stomach.

Broadly, if you are drinking a strawberry concoction, you are likely to write, and read, literature either about feisty independent women who have social and sexual misadventures but manage to land the perfect relationship and job by the last chapter, gay friend optional.  Please note though a worrying trend of such female characters meeting for coffee rather than shots to discuss the state of their love life.

If you are drinking something that tastes like aftershave made from olives, then you are likely to write and read fiction about spies, honourable criminals or knight errant charming bastards.  These men also drink coffee, but only to shift hangovers the size of Mount Olympus, when on stake outs, or when in exotic foreign locations and the coffee has the taste and consistency of tar, in a good way.

Sweeping generalisations certainly, but the cocktail is no place for subtlety.  For all that has been written about 'mixologists', sloshing together some booze like a toddler with access to a mini-bar is less the recipe for something to delight the senses and more like the precursor to a night of some poor life choices.

But it also produces fiction that, in different ways, hits the spot.

Write on red

Famously, Laurie Lee, one of the nation’s most beloved novelists, wrote ‘on wine’.  Whether or not he was ever drunk in charge of a typewriter is unclear but one has to entertain the possibility that, as a poet, he typed without due care and attention.  He did his writing in the Greek Islands, presumably because in the days before bargain booze, affordable New World wines or even Blue Nun, this was the only way he could become sufficiently inebriated to welcome the Muse should she come to visit.  Also, proximity to Mt Parnassus may have helped.

Rock stars smoke, inject, inhale and presumably occasionally insert for inspiration.  Writers drink.  Christ alone knows why, as excessive booze normally leads to feelings of alienation from the world and a profound sense of being under-appreciated and misunderstood, all of which is achievable through the simple act of publishing a slim volume of verse.  Alcohol also inhibits early morning creativity, and certain writers famously were at their creative peak at first light.  Presumably this meant they could post the latest chapter of their novel off to their publishers at eleven in the morning on their way to the pub.

However, in the spirit of enquiry G&P is embarking on a five-part special to explore the effects of various types of alcohol on writing, beyond those of not being able to remember that fantastic idea for a novel you had last night (something about a boy wizard?) just before you passed out, or not being able to decipher the notes scrawled on a beermat that could be a poem, or somebody’s e mail address.

We continue with…red wine.

In doing so, it would be wrong to ignore the role that red wine has played in art.  By art, I mean proper art, a man at an easel with some oil paints, a glass of thinners, a glass of red wine and, if he’s painting a nude, a semi.  I was once told that artists drank red wine to clear their sinuses, or something.  Knowing artists (as I don’t) it was more probably to stop the voices screaming at them to paint, paint, paint the sky green.

On first inspection, the literary associations with red wine appear obvious, it’s all about the horror novel.  Not only does it look like claret, (actually it sometimes is actually claret), but red wine and other red drinks (strangely never Ribena) appear to be the alcoholic beverage of choice for those who wear rings, have lace at their cuffs and have a LOT of vampire literature on their Kindles.

Let’s make this clear right now.  You only need one vampire novel.  It’s called ‘Salem’s Lot’ and after you read it, you will never want to read any vampire fiction ever again.  Front cover blurb quotes?  I’ve got one for the publisher right here “G&P: this book will FUCK YOU UP!”.

So, moving on…

If you are a writer, you can drink red wine to achieve success in a couple of genres.

The first is horror and, as previously pointed out, it might be cliché but damn if it isn’t good fun to read a ghost story with something red at your elbow.  A bloody good horror story has a sensation of creeping dread much like the way a good red creeps up on you.  It swills and swells and surrounds the senses until you feel a bit queer.

The red is the drink of the mystery writer, the murder, the whocaresdunnet, the red is as thick and as dark as the clouds of confusion in a novel or the fog that lends atmosphere (literally) to a story.

Why would you drink red if you were writing?

Well, it mellows things, flattens them out.  Ideal if, in your first draft, you had ‘FUCK ME, THE FANGS, THE FANGS!” as the opening line and then a separate paragraph with 227 exclamation marks.

Red wine builds up to stuff (see also, fortified wine).  It’s the wine people drink three to four decisions ahead of taking a decision, a light procrastinating wine, if you will, and so ideal for mysteries.  “I’ll check out that death threat tomorrow, but first, a glass of this lovely looking wine left on my doorstep!”

It’s also the perfect winter drink (you can stick Horlicks up your arse and, in the case of a recent Horlicks-botherer, actually can).  You’re by the fire, there may be a blanket, there’s certainly an armchair. You have three uninterrupted hours ahead of you, you are of an age when you pick up a paperback rather than a smartphone, what better than a bottle of something cheeky to the point of impertinence to enhance the experience.

The other genre associated with red wine is a niche one; the military biography.  There are three obvious connotations.  The first is blood, soaking into either sand, turf, water or snow depending on your theatre.  The second is the colour of a military man’s coat, either intentionally during the Nepolionic wars where a red jacket was just the thing, or quite unintentionally in any other era when a red jacket meant that you, or somebody near you, had just encountered something sharp.  Finally, red wine is second only to the pineapple as being an essential element of any military anecdote.  ‘This bottle here, these were the damned Frenchies’, that sort of thing.

And that’s that.  There’s a book for every sort of reader and there’s a drink for every sort of writer, some writers indeed (Kinky Friedman, I’m looking at you!) enjoy several types of drink.  Laurie Lee wrote on wine and wrote brilliantly, but sometimes it’s interesting to consider that, if he had written on beer or fizz, he could have left a lasting legacy of military yarns or even romcom.

Of course, what he’s most famous for is cider.

Write on spirits

Famously, Laurie Lee, one of the nation’s most beloved novelists, wrote ‘on wine’.  Whether or not he was ever drunk in charge of a typewriter is unclear but one has to entertain the possibility that, as a poet, he typed without due care and attention.  He did his writing in the Greek Islands, presumably because in the days before bargain booze, affordable New World wines or even Blue Nun, this was the only way he could become sufficiently inebriated to welcome the Muse should she come to visit.  Also, proximity to Mt Parnassus may have helped.

Rock stars smoke, inject, inhale and presumably occasionally insert for inspiration.  Writers drink.  Christ alone knows why, as excessive booze normally leads to feelings of alienation from the world and a profound sense of being under-appreciated and misunderstood, all of which is achievable through the simple act of publishing a slim volume of verse.  Alcohol also inhibits early morning creativity, and certain writers famously were at their creative peak at first light.  Presumably this meant they could post the latest chapter of their novel off to their publishers at eleven in the morning on their way to the pub.

However, in the spirit of enquiry G&P is embarking on a five-part special to explore the effects of various types of alcohol on writing, beyond those of not being able to remember that fantastic idea for a novel you had last night (something about a boy wizard?) just before you passed out, or not being able to decipher the notes scrawled on a beermat that could be a poem, or somebody’s e mail address.

We continue with…spirits.

Shall we mention ghost stories?  Let’s not.

Shall we mention Hemmingway?  Earnest, not Wayne.  Well, there’s a school of thought that spirits make one mean, and certainly EM appeared to have it in for bulls, fish, Big Game and many of God’s creatures that had never harmed him, but are we to blame that all on spirits?  Let’s not.

Spirits are a man’s drink.  Ignore those adverts that come on at Christmas featuring a girl in a glittery frock with a tumbler of some brownish liquid.  This is a game, but ultimately doomed, attempt to extend spirits sales past the saturated male market to women.  Does that advert also have the same woman, with perfect lipstick, pulling on a thick cigar?  Thought so, the famous and famously successful advertising company of Malefantasy and Wankjet (London, New York, Pontypool) strikes again.  The only spirit women drink is vodka, and that’s only because the makers of cranberry juice really, really know how to market that stuff.

No, spirits equal men.  Spirits, ingested, throw everything into sharp relief, including emotions.  That’s why gin makes women sad and why scotch, and any other spirit, at all, makes men angry.  The drinker of spirits writes about manly stuff.  Spies, war, sports, and of course, drinking.

The spirit drinker, one feels, is above all an adventurer.

Spirits are ideal when travelling to places where you need to take the maximum amount of drinkable alcohol for the minimum encumbrance.  When the first man lands on Mars, he’ll have scotch with him (this is after Scotland gains independence and launches a hilariously ambitious, but surprising successful, space programme).  If you need to go further, faster, spirits are your friend.

The same goes with drinking them.  If you don’t have time to faff around with beer, or enjoying your drink by droning on endlessly about the complexities of the nose, as you do with wine, then reach for the hard stuff.

Because drinking spirits is not enjoyable.  If it was, mixers wouldn’t exist.

Spirits also bring, as aforementioned, and depending on the spirit in question, a certain clarity of thought.

Gin.  Instant Hogarthian and Dickensian purity, being able to describe with absolute clarity the cruddy undersole of the human condition, be it sociatial or personal.

Vodka.  Ah, vodka.  The easy association would be with Russian novels so thick they look like normal novels that have fallen into the bath.  And that’s about right.  Always, always be suspicious of any alcohol that is clear.  Rule of thumb, if it looks like you could clean spark plugs with it, avoid ingesting it.

Bourbon.  Interestingly, not actually a drink in and of itself.  Bourbon is Scotch and sweetness, like the classic cocktail of Scotch and Irn Bru.  Bourbon is one of those wonderful drinks that foreigners make.  It’s like one of those ‘fuLl engliSH breaKFasts’ that you see advertised on Greek island tavernas, with an image of the Full English that the attempt on your plate bears little resemblance to.  The genius of bourbon production is this; just as Scotch is named for a geographical area which enables the purchaser to build brand loyalty based on faux clan association, so naming your beverage after a backwoods hillbilly, Confederate general or similar will enable your customers to decide whether they are Daniels or Beam, without realising that because of the amount of sugary syrup added to the booze required to make the muck drinkable, they are all Colas.

Scotch.  The associations are largely positive.  Spies (of the right sort).  Men with the right sort of beard.  The sort of chap who has an estate in the Highlands and who vacates London during August.

In fact Scotch is the only spirit to write on, and to read on.  Picture an author with a tumbler of scotch by his (lady authors are also available) side.  Pull back.  Typewriter?  Helicopter extract?  Very possibly, and more importantly, possibly not just on the page.

Spirits, never in the form of ‘shorts’ which in any civilized society are never a measure of alcohol and only ever the apparel of adolescent schoolboys, but rather served as the more manly ‘large one’, are also the preferred drink, or ‘lunch’, as the technical term has it, of journalists.  In particular, whisky is the go-to drink of foreign correspondents.  This is because it not only helps them blot out any horrors of war they may encounter, but, back in the day when wars had not yet migrated to the dusty arsehole of the world where people didn’t drink (hence: war), whisky was currency.  Apparently during the 1970s, it was standard practice to produce at any border crossing, in this order; a litre of Johnny Walker, a carton of 200 fags, your passport, your press credentials.

Single malt may be the tipple of choice for fiction writers and for heroic explorers who publish bestselling accounts of their travels (possibly posthumously).  For the journalist though, it has to be whisky and for the epitome of the journalist, the foreign correspondent, it has to be Johnny Walker, named for the famous Radio 2 DeeJay.  Classy.

Of course, today, a foreign correspondent today is more likely to be holed up in Costa sipping latte, weaving a story out of unsubstantiated tweets and blog posts, Wiki entries and Google Earth snapshots than actual reportage.

Write on fizz

Famously, Laurie Lee, one of the nation’s most beloved novelists, wrote ‘on wine’.  Whether or not he was ever drunk in charge of a typewriter is unclear but one has to entertain the possibility that, as a poet, he typed without due care and attention.  He did his writing in the Greek Islands, presumably because in the days before bargain booze, affordable New World wines or even Blue Nun, this was the only way he could become sufficiently inebriated to welcome the Muse should she come to visit.  Also, proximity to Mt Parnassus may have helped.

Rock stars smoke, inject, inhale and presumably occasionally insert for inspiration.  Writers drink.  Christ alone knows why, as excessive booze normally leads to feelings of alienation from the world and a profound sense of being under-appreciated and misunderstood, all of which is achievable through the simple act of publishing a slim volume of verse.  Alcohol also inhibits early morning creativity, and certain writers famously were at their creative peak at first light.  Presumably this meant they could post the latest chapter of their novel off to their publishers at eleven in the morning on their way to the pub.

However, in the spirit of enquiry G&P is embarking on a five-part special to explore the effects of various types of alcohol on writing, beyond those of not being able to remember that fantastic idea for a novel you had last night (something about a boy wizard?) just before you passed out, or not being able to decipher the notes scrawled on a beermat that could be a poem, or somebody’s e mail address.

We continue with…fizz.

I am writing this drinking a glass of cold, white fizz.  Let us be clear from the start that fizz has a place in writing, both in the formulation of the art and in its enjoyment.  This is also true of other arts, whilst theatre may only be enjoyed by the judicious use of gin during the interval (I don’t make the rules) any visit to an art gallery is enhanced by wandering around with a glass of something, making sure you drink it before it gets warm.  My favourite place for doing this is the RA in their Summer Exhibition, so much so that if I picture, well, a picture, I can feel the sensation of the bobbles and sparkles from the glass alighting on my wrist.

Fizz comes in many forms, not simply that directed into the face of an unsuspecting Formula 1 podium hostess like sparking French bukake.  It has a part to play in literature certainly, one need only think of the scene in ‘John MacNab’ when the gentlemen poachers underline the serious of their task by swearing off ‘the Widow’ until the poaching is done.

But what does the writer who drinks fizz write?  Well, it may depend on the fizz in question.

Champagne probably indicates a high-end sex and shopping novel of such thickness that even if dropped in the pool on holiday, no noticeable swelling occurs.

Prosecco and Cava?  Chick lit.  Funny if it’s Prosecco, not quite so good if it’s Cava.

Finally, anything that fizzes because it’s had something done to it chemically?  Self publishers.  And yes, I do include anyone that sells their vampire novellas on Kindle.

But mainly, we’re talking romance.  Because until Rohypnol came along, no drug was so associated with seduction as fizz.  And if the perfect place to enjoy a romantic novel is indeed in the bath surrounded by scented candles with a glass of something cold and sparkling, rather than on a crowded bus with 90% organic condensation running down the windows and pigeon-shit flavoured rain thrashing down outside, then surely it must put fizz in the prose if there’s fizz in the author.

Life, for sure, goes better with bubbles, in the bath and in the glass.

It adds a touch of class too.  You are unlikely to see two women fighting after a few too many glasses of fizz.  Crying in mascara destroying style whilst assuring one another that all men are bastards yes, but hostile to a sister?  Never.  Champagne is there to celebrate the end of hostilities, not start them (unless it’s a toast at a wedding, boom boom!).

Fizz is romance in a glass.  If we overheard the object of our affections describe us to a friend as ‘the champagne of lovers’, we would simultaneously think how wonderful, sophisticated and complex we are, possibly spoiling the effect by bellowing ‘fucking get in!’ at the news.  To be described as ‘the Pernod of boyfriends’ may leave one puzzled and Googling.  The connotations are all good.  Very few moments of tragedy or heartbreak are associated with bubbles, unless the Bubbles in question is the professional name of a clown wanted by Yewtree, or the ones in your IV.

Fizz, then, is the drink of love.  We order it when we wish to impress, when we are celebrating, when there’s a free bar.

To drink fizz when writing is to have the bubbles percolate the prose, to make it light as air, so that even though the only bubbles that feature in the first paragraph of the first page are those created by the raindrops on the grey puddles on the pavement walked by Cilla Oddshaw, the plain Jane PA who is shortly to turn the life of successful-but-in-need-of-fixing Clive Bigkock around, we know that by the end of the novel, or indeed by page fifteen if Cilla makes her appetite for innovative filth clear to Clive early on, there will be champagne corks popping, and, later, a wedding.

Fizz, you see, is frolicsome fun for fillies.  Wildly sexist?  OK, picture a chick lit author.  Pull back from the head and shoulders shot.  Is she holding a pint of stout?  No, thought not.

Write on beer

Famously, Laurie Lee, one of the nation’s most beloved novelists, wrote ‘on wine’.  Whether or not he was ever drunk in charge of a typewriter is unclear but one has to entertain the possibility that, as a poet, he typed without due care and attention.  He did his writing in the Greek Islands, presumably because in the days before bargain booze, affordable New World wines or even Blue Nun, this was the only way he could become sufficiently inebriated to welcome the Muse should she come to visit.  Also, proximity to Mt Parnassus may have helped.

Rock stars smoke, inject, inhale and presumably occasionally insert for inspiration.  Writers drink.  Christ alone knows why, as excessive booze normally leads to feelings of alienation from the world and a profound sense of being under-appreciated and misunderstood, all of which is achievable through the simple act of publishing a slim volume of verse.  Alcohol also inhibits early morning creativity, and certain writers famously were at their creative peak at first light.  Presumably this meant they could post the latest chapter of their novel off to their publishers at eleven in the morning on their way to the pub.

However, in the spirit of enquiry G&P is embarking on a five-part special to explore the effects of various types of alcohol on writing, beyond those of not being able to remember that fantastic idea for a novel you had last night (something about a boy wizard?) just before you passed out, or not being able to decipher the notes scrawled on a beermat that could be a poem, or somebody’s e mail address.

We continue with…beer.

I am writing this in the pub.  It’s actually called ‘The Red Lion’, which might give an insight into the sort of place it is, at three o’clock on a weekday afternoon, which might give you an indication of my commitment to my research.  Pubs off hours are very different to pubs when civilians (those who drink at Christmas/anyone who orders a Guinness last when getting a round in) frequent them.  They are communities.  The barmaid (who doesn’t know me, I hasten to add, I’m not rich enough to make a habit of this) asked me how I was?  OK, this may be barcraft 101 but it’s also a loaded question.  I’m in a pub at three in the afternoon, chances are things may not be going well (I will need many drinks) or I am celebrating something (many, many drinks, you’re not found ‘not guilty’ every day).  Actually, I see why she asked.

It’s also got a priests hole, and once upon a time there would have been a humorous sign, but Yewtree has fucked that for us as well.

The drink of choice is Stella Artois.  If ever there was an advertising Big Lie, Stella is a prime example of it.  Marketed as posh lager, it even comes, Belgian style, served in its own glass, a goblet style thing.  Anyone who is familiar with this beer knows that it should indeed be served in its own drinking vessel, but that this should be a plastic pint glass.  Stella, you see, has a reputation for turning people into aggressive nutters.

So what should one write on Stella?  Well, I am typing one handed while I make notes for a series of books that will be written under the pen-name of ‘Jack Stroud’ and will follow the fortunes of the males of the ‘Fret’ family as they fight in every war since..,let’s see, yes, the English Civil War.  Titles so far include ‘Royal Fret’, ‘Fret in Tartan’, ‘Fret at the Front’, ‘Frontline Fret’, ‘Fret and the Ruby’, ‘Fret Pulls It Off’, ‘Fret of the Artic’, ‘Fret of the Antarctic’, ‘Fret of the Falklands’, ‘Frantic Fret’, ‘The Fret Files’ (short stories) and, of course, ‘Fret with Wings’ (possibly featuring a female Fret).

Obviously, these will take off (especially the last one).  At that point, I employ an army of ghost writers and project the story of the Fret family backwards, as the Fret family take on the French, the Dutch, the Romans and the Vikings.

A movie adaptation you say?  Ha!  Remember, I’ve been drinking.  Stick your movie option up your arse, along with your assertion that this entire idea is predicated on the plot line from the Forrest Gump movie that every male in Lieutenant Dan’s family line had fought and died in some conflict.

I’m thinking…cut out and dress doll line.  Right?  Right?  Remember those 2D dolls you used to get in the back of magazines, with cut out clothes and tabs and so on?  Well, how about a Fret…but with loads of uniforms, it would be a cross between a really crap and outdated effort to keep kids quiet and a cutting edge publishing phenomenon and, here’s the kicker, it would be fucking useless on Kindle, unless Kindle comes with a printer.

Also, I’d market the cut out and keep doll and costumes with a colouring book and crayons and bundle it with the latest book in the Fret series, subtitled ‘Last of the Frets’ but titled in Great Britain ‘Fucking Fret!’ and in the US or any other country that doesn’t speak English properly ‘Fret’s annoyed’.  The plot is, er, just like the other plots, Fret has a hard time in some conflict, considers leaving, thinks on his family, rediscovers his courage and fucks somebody over with a rusty bayonet that belonged to his grandfather, or a pottery shard that a distant relative left buried in the sand, or in the side of an enemy also buried in the sand…

…details are unimportant.  What’s important is that the story involves Fret, this Fret, finding a diary from a Fret, that Fret, who fought in some previous war that, and here we go, not only gives him the courage to fight on, but actually reveals a hidden path to outflank the enemy.

Fuckin’ YEA!  This is going to be the first colouring book ever to win a BAFTA.  Did I type BAFTA, I mean Booker.  Fuck it, they need to invent a new category of BAFTA, or merge them, the first BOOFTA winner is, me!

So.  That’s beer then.  I suspect bitter might, paradoxically, inspire one to write something bucolic, possibly involving a bicycle and a clergyman, maybe even a crime thriller. But lager?  Lager is a war story in a glass.  Goblet.  Plastic beaker.  Whatever.

Write on white

Famously, Laurie Lee, one of the nation’s most beloved novelists, wrote ‘on wine’.  Whether or not he was ever drunk in charge of a typewriter is unclear but one has to entertain the possibility that, as a poet, he typed without due care and attention.  He did his writing in the Greek Islands, presumably because in the days before bargain booze, affordable New World wines or even Blue Nun, this was the only way he could become sufficiently inebriated to welcome the Muse should she come to visit.  Also, proximity to Mt Parnassus may have helped.

Rock stars smoke, inject, inhale and presumably occasionally insert for inspiration.  Writers drink.  Christ alone knows why, as excessive booze normally leads to feelings of alienation from the world and a profound sense of being under-appreciated and misunderstood, all of which is achievable through the simple act of publishing a slim volume of verse.  Alcohol also inhibits early morning creativity, and certain writers famously were at their creative peak at first light.  Presumably this meant they could post the latest chapter of their novel off to their publishers at eleven in the morning on their way to the pub.

However, in the spirit of enquiry G&P is embarking on a five-part special to explore the effects of various types of alcohol on writing, beyond those of not being able to remember that fantastic idea for a novel you had last night (something about a boy wizard?) just before you passed out, or not being able to decipher the notes scrawled on a beermat that could be a poem, or somebody’s e mail address.

We being with…white wine.

White wine suits poets.  It’s bucolic.  It’s also, these days (as Stewart Lee would say) bloody strong.  Back in the day, there’s a chance that Laurie Lee was drinking something delicious, refreshing, good with fish and not terribly alcoholic.  So, a couple of glasses with lunch and then crank out a few thousand words of gorgeous literature, then a nap.  Great.  The poets of today do not have it so easy.  White wine is literary rocket fuel, in that all the action happens very quickly and in a very short space of time.  First sip, feel inspiration tingle, middle third of glass, burst of creativity, bottom third of glass, decision time.  Second glass, your day’s work is over.  The only major literary decision you are going to make for the rest of the day is trying to get the password on your Majestic account right to order another crate of the stuff.

The thing about white wine is this, it’s an event in a glass.  It should be served chilled, cold enough to disguise the fact that you are serving your guests the £3.99 special with notes of grass and petrol.  This should chill the glass, resulting in that race to the bottom before it gets warm that only The Queen is immune to (special gloves, liver like a…well, liver like a monarch rather than a weak and feeble woman).  Glasses of white wine look especially good when placed next to manual typewriters.  The portions are these:

A bottle of white wine in the afternoon – poets

A carafe of white wine – novelists

A glass of white wine – readers and people who think that they have something fresh to write about vampires.

Alcohol, of course, is famous for allowing one to overcome one’s inhibitions.  To this extent, the reveal of the true self, one wonders if Dr Jekyll’s formula was actually: gin.  But if employed by the author, white wine, very much the perky, sharp, slightly noisome friend/fiend in the bottle, can be beneficial.

It’s summer.  Bees drone, lawnmowers drone, drones, well, buzz, which is odd, because bees also buzz, and some bees are drones, but few if any bees carry cameras.

OK, I’ve had a glass of wine.  That’s the rule.  Drink while you write.  I don’t make the rules, apart from this one.

Oh, and fank thuck for spelllcheck.

Right.  It’s summer, cows moo, bees drone and the poet or novelist is in his or her shed.  It’s too hot to write, it’s too hot to think.  Cotton is sticking to buttock in a way that is more uncomfortable than alluring.  Then.  Sandwiches and a glass of white wine.

The inspiration flows.  The verse is conjured, the stanzas flow.  The plot thickens as the characters develop, maybe one of the characters has a glass of wine and a ham sandwich.  I would read that book.

Cold white wine is a shock to the system, it’s invigorating.  It opens up a world of wonder and excitement and here’s why authors really, really love it, it leaves us wanting more.

Associated with: spy novel, novels about the Napoleonic war, poetry about hedges, anything to do with sport (grass notes), anything to do with the sea (great with fish), any author who writes 250 words a day.  Literary lunches.  Literary launches.

White wine is very much a summer drink, while glorious halcyon days may be bad for creativity, who needs inspiration when you have condensation beading on the outside of the glass?  After a second glass it’s time to put away the typewriter, and Google the reviews of your last book, after a third, the real work of the afternoon, going on Amazon under an assumed name and reviewing/shitting all over the latest offering from that wanker who called your last effort ‘disappointing’.

Finally, white wine is the only drink on the planet whose character is wholly unchanged by being served in a plastic receptacle.  At a literary festival?  Don’t know what to order?  Let me tell you what’s going to be delicious, refreshing and pleasingly cool in the hand in a sweaty marquee in a summer in the Shires.  Served from a box?  Oh, OK.

Inspiration

If you’re lucky, there’s beauty all around you.  If you are very lucky, it’s in the mirror too and you can make a living selling make up or clothes that normal people can’t afford or look good in.

There’s an art to appreciating beauty though.  In the appropriately titled film ‘American beauty’, there’s a scene where a boy shows a girl a video of a plastic bag caught in a breeze, endlessly circulating.  This, he breathes in solemn tones, is the most beautiful thing he has ever filmed.  This, 400 people in a cinema auditorium think, is a reflection on the need for American youth to get out more.  It’s at this point that you realise that any movie containing such a scene must be more up its own arse than a video of a rectal exam.  Anyone who has witnessed a plastic bag on the wing in the wild will know that they are not to be trusted and can attack, wrapping themselves round your leg or shoe and leaving you no option but to shake off said plastic bag by doing a ritual dance that, performed in public, makes you look like a one-man Morris troupe.

It does pose the question though, whether true beauty is to be found in nature, in mankind’s creation or, like a plastic bag in an updraft, in a combination of both?

Picture a new cathedral.  Beautiful?  Unlikely.

Now picture a proper Norman job, the sort that took a good couple of centuries to build, where you capped out the building your great-grandfather dug the foundations for and which has stood sentinel over the landscape for a good few centuries.  Fresh carved, gargoyles and grotesques are probably not best described as beautiful but, after a couple of hundred years weathering, the carving that was started by man is finished by nature as the lines and features of the stone are smoothed and, through architectural botox, a building becomes landscape.

And that’s just the outside.  Wait until you get to the gift shop and tea room.

Or not, the thing to do is head straight for the gift shop and pick up a guide to the cathedral, because if not you will spend the rest of your visit wondering what’s the nave and what’s the choir.  Like being able to name every wildflower in a hedgerow (ragwort, bramble, pornmag, tizercan) knowledge of the correct architectural terms for different parts of medieval buildings is something you think you should have, and feel guilty about not possessing.  Like an ethnic friend.

Places, and people, can be described as inspiring.  The Greeks, early market leaders in matters poetical and theoretical, outsourced inspiration to muses.  These creatures were capricious and could be found in various places, oddly enough frequently attractive places that were quiet and allowed a chap to think about what rhymed with ‘trireme’, or how to found a new branch of philosophy that would get you the girls, or just how to fuck goats.  That last one is a bit of a shocker I concur, but these were less sophisticated times and hanging around in a glade can get lonely.

Muses persist to this day.  Usually they are women.  Unusually they inspire men.  Usually they have really, really good cheekbones.  Rarely do they advise on advanced trigonometry or how to romance ruminants, and the world is arguably a poorer place for it.

Other places where inspiration can be found evidently include the bottom of bottles of alcohol, especially if one is a poet.  And stimulants appear to be a common feature, as, given the number of people sitting in coffee shops with laptops open in front of them with the phrase ‘SCENE ONE’ or ‘CHAPTER ONE’ on the screen, followed by a big white space, latte would appear to inspire.

Anyone who has ever picked up a bat, a ball, a pen or a brush has, at some point, probably been inspired by somebody or something.  It can be a moment of genius or a moment of heroism.

And some of those that have been inspired may go on to inspire others, and not even know it, like the master mason who carved the gargoyle.

Fox Tray

Bloke goes up to a bar and orders five pints of bitter, a gin and tonic, a scotch, and a bag of pork scratchings.  Barman asks ‘Would you like a tray?’.  Bloke answers ‘Don’t you think I’ve got enough to carry?’.
Can you give an old joke a home?  For just £24 a month, you could keep Radio 4 Extra going and so ensure that jokes like that are preserved for the nation, whether the nation wants them or not.  For more information, see Barry Cryer.
That joke is so old that there are remarks about it being old written in hieroglyphics.  Old, and true.
Because nobody should operate a tray without being trained in the art first.  By trained I mean nobody should try to use a tray who is not a character in a P. G. Wodehouse story or a drunk uncle who does a rendition of ‘Mule Train!’ that is astonishing in its capacity to shock, delight and put the poor drunk bastard in A&E with a concussion every Boxing Day.  For the unwary, the untrained or those without sufficient upper body strength, the tray is simply a way to drop a lot of things more efficiently.
One should never have to transport more than two cups of tea at any one time unless you are a paid employee or, to give them their politically correct term, skivvy.
The tray itself though is something of a social marvel.
At one end of the social spectrum, say Downton Abbey, the tray itself is made of silver and is worth more than the vicar's virtue, and that's before it's loaded up with enough booze to make the conversation at the dinner table of an English country house bearable to anyone who thinks that 'tying one's own flies' is a simple precaution to prevent unintended. chapout.
Then there is the Formica tray, that has done service in many a home for many a decade.  In more civilised times, the tray would be beringed with the evidence if a million cuppas safely transported from kitchen to front room.  In these less enlightened times, the tray is a personal dining table, allowing each family member to enjoy their evening meal not in the company of each other, but bathed in the gentle light of the idiot lantern.
Let us not forget either the plastic tray, black or red, always slightly damp, picked up at one end of a self serve counter and loaded with sandwiches and beverages before being used to assault the cashier who thinks it's OK to charge you £7.99 for a BLT and a coke.
And let's not forget coke and, in that act, take a moment to reflect the makeshift tray, that flat object that can be used to transport stuff from hither to yon and, when fashioned from something black and shiny, is ideal for serving stimulants.
My new acquisition is far from an impromptu tray, although it is stimulating.  It is, in short, magnificent.  Who can fail to be thrilled by a proper tin tray featuring a country house scene with a couple of foxes frolicking in the foreground.  Who?  As a the owl, also pictured, might ask.
It's a tray that tells a story.  What is happening in the house?  Is there a party, is there a tray within a tray in use?  Or is there bad business afoot, is the daughter of the house being forbidden from marrying her true love, a humble woodcutter, albeit one who has had his woodcuts exhibited at the Tate Modern.  And what of the foxes?  What role do they play in this drama.  Is it Evelyn Waugh, or M R James territory that we're in?  All of these questions and more occurred to me as I saw this object for the first time, but perhaps the most pertinent was 'are you going to buy that tray or just look at it some more?', as posed by the shopkeeper.
I think it's charming.  I am also convinced the house pictured is the one from 'The Mousetrap', which would explain why the tray is just the right size to serve up a book and a cuppa, or a revolver.

Services with a smile

A pint of beer.  Lovely.  This is best enjoyed after briskly walking the dogs or engaging in some rewarding manual labour prior to slumping in a chair and sighing.

Whetherspoons, the pub chain famous for selling very cheap beer and for being open for breakfast so that patrons can enjoy a croissant with their cider, today opened their first pub on a motorway service station.

This is, depending on your point of view, a sound commercial decision and a move that will allow weary travellers to have a decent meal at an affordable price prior to resuming their journey refreshed and alert, or madness.  In particular, motorway madness.  And that’s the worst type of madness.  Apart from madness involving power tools.  Or genocide.

Wheatherspoon’s argument for having a pub in a service station – a place where drivers’ pee and guzzle coffee prior to resuming a journey on a very busy road full of speeding traffic – is that this is a place where a motorist can stop and have something to eat and a tea or a coffee or a wide variety of drinks or, if they are drinking alcohol, a sensible amount.

So what’s a sensible amount?  I’ve been on the M40.  A sensible amount of alcohol to drink whilst driving on it is none at all.  A sensible amount to drink when you arrive home after driving on it is a fucking shedload.

Even if the driver isn’t boozing, is a pub breakfast or lunch, which can involve sausage, beans, eggs, double chips and an extra sausage, really the best thing to eat prior to undertaking a motorway journey?  Isn’t the best meal to drive on three amphetamine tablets rattling around in one of those wee paper cup things and a strong coffee?

Those who oppose the opening of the pub argue that THIS IS A PUB IN A SERVICE STATION!

I can’t actually recall the name of the pub, but surely this is ripe territory for a competition.  ‘The Drivers’ Arms’, with the pub sign being a couple of hands on a steering wheel?  ‘The Coach and Party’?

Possibly this is a throwback to the romantic early days of motoring, when roadside coaching inns enjoyed a brief revival as roadhouses, offering beer, fags and hearty fare to weary motorists before all those pesky laws about drink driving or social conventions about smoking a pipe in a car full of infants came into being.  Our roads though, are somewhat different now.

I’m a huge fan of pubs, and I’ve got nothing in particular against the M40, but I’m not sure that a pub in a motorways service station is a great idea.  There are many things that one can usefully do at a motorway service station, but ‘tarry’ is not one of them.

Which makes me wonder about a pub patronised by a transient community.  Or will it be?  Who will be the regulars at the Drivers Arms?  I’m romantic enough to hope that this will be a destination location for those in the locality who fancy a quick drink in convivial company and are willing to toil across the no-mans land, and possibly six lanes of speeding traffic, that surround these places for a pint and some lively conversation.  Possibly these will be the same people who when faced with the question ‘where shall we eat tonight’, don’t hesitate to respond ‘the KFC at the service station…we can get a drink at the pub first’.