Week 115 – Identity, Excuses And A Goosed Liver

I’ve been off. So I’ve been happy. I’m back to work on Sunday. So I will be suicidal!

I’ve had a few sherbets this week, throughout the week. (Sherbet(s) – ‘Sherbet Dip’ – Sip – Meaning having some alcoholic beverage.) This gave me this weeks posting.

If you are of a certain age, alcohol has been a constant companion. We marvelled at our relations who could handle the booze. Those that were never sick, were legends. We started off with a shandy (Beer and lemonade) and then had a sherry at New Year. From there we sneaked into pubs to marvel at our first pints. We had four and wondered how any man could drink twenty. Before we knew it we were drinking four pints as a thirst quencher, then starting on the haufs. (Spirits) Ironically, we all remember the first time that we drunk a bottle.

As we get older we embrace not remembering as we know that our short term memory is fucked!!! We eventually stop being able to handle it and go back to being four pint wonders as our livers are fucked.

Then we don’t care anymore as we are totally and completely fucked!

Some crematoriums in Scotland charge your family more depending on how long it takes for the fire to go out.

But we don’t just embrace alcohol, we give it an identity.

The first time I realised this was when a very heavy heroin user once pointed out an observation on his neighbour:

 

‘He wiz radio!! He wiz mad wae the swallie.’

The translation to this is:

‘He was radio-rental (mental). He was mad with the alcohol.'(‘Swallie’ is a colloquial term for ‘swallow’ which points towards a drink, and always an alcoholic drink.)

 

I have another few examples when ‘the drink’ is blamed when it really should be the person’s actions that are in question.

 

‘Ah murdered him deid. It wisnae ma fawt. It was yoan Carley Specials.’

Translation:

‘I murdered him dead. It wasn’t my fault. It was that very strong lager.’

 

‘Aye Ah gave hur a dull yin but it wisnae me it wiz thoan Frosty Jack.’

Translation:

‘Yes I hit her rather hard but it wasn’t my fault it was that very strong Dry Cider.’

 

‘The weans are starvin’, the bint’s up tae high dough and oor erses ur oot the windae. It’s no ma fawt – Ah’ve gote the eternal thirst. Ah dae luv my Buckie!’

Translation:

‘Our children are malnourished, my wife is very stressed and we are due to be evicted. It isn’t my fault, I am an alcoholic. I really appreciate tonic wine that has been produced by Monks.’

 

Even our Judges use this mind-set as a summing up:

‘Mr McClarity, after great consideration and deliberation, I have concluded that you must not abuse your boundary neighbours. The law prohibits you from murdering random, innocent people and you can never kick foraging badgers. I am therefore sentencing you to six hours Community Service as I fully accept, as is my understanding, that at the time, you were oan the drink.’

 

There is a point to all this. I looked up on the interweb and I saw that there was a site that stated there were ninety nine alcoholic writers. And this was only the ones that they could be bothered researching. I wondered if it was failure that caused so many writers to drink, then I saw the list. A lot of them had reason to celebrate!

Yep another shit link coming up!

We had two folks who had reason to celebrate as they were having their first stories published this week! And three returning authors!

This week our topics stretched to cancer, a fire affair, a dread, a parental relationship and some surreal observations involving llamas!

As always our initial comments follow.

 

On Monday the wonderfully dark Ashlie Allen was first up with ‘Fuelling The Promise Of Fire‘

‘Weird and brutal.’

‘Full of passion and very shocking.’

‘An original approach on a nasty, sad and slightly Gothic tale.’

 

I don’t need to introduce our author on Tuesday. Our fellow editor and professional Welshman Nik Eveleigh was next up with ‘A Single Grain Of Salt‘.

As always he works an idea into a single powerful line that nurtures the tale into a complex piece of brilliant story-telling.

 

On Wednesday we had Patrick Winters. He is a very talented writer who has been coming up with some real quality work. His short ‘Drag‘ was our middle of the week story.

‘Tobias once said that most cancer stories ended up solely about the cancer. Patrick has actually made a character and an individual story from this. Brilliant!’

‘This is good. Very good.’

‘The ending was always going to be tricky but he did a great job of it.’

 

On Thursday we had the privilege to publish a friend of the site. It has been a total pleasure to work with Bruce Levine. His professionalism and courtesy is a joy for us to be associated with. Bruce’s first story for us was ‘Scotch On The Rocks.’

‘A very poignant ending.’

‘As a reader you felt you were with him all through the story.’

‘I was intrigued by the ‘something is going to happen’ premise.

 

And last of the week was our second new author. We extend a welcome and a plea for more stories to both Bruce and Evan J. Massey who finished off the week with ‘A Christmas With My Father.’

‘Packed with emotion and quite moving.’

‘This has a deep undercurrent.’

‘You know that he will be paying the consequences in so many ways.’

 

 

That’s us again for another week folks.

So if you are going to have a drink problem, then make sure it is through success!! Add to the ninety nine. You’d be in good company. (Well…Some of them.)

Don’t toast failure. Leave that to me and my constantly irritated liver!!!

 

Hugh