Drink Beer, It's Fun!

A while back, I shared with the nation my yearning for less work, better weather and a reliable and inexpensive supply of olives, pastis and red wine; all served to me in the charmingly simple way of a provencal patron. Well the weather's been much the same as it always is this time of year and I'm still putting in those full days down at the farm - figuratively speaking that is. And have you seen the price of Pernod down at Oddbins these days? Though they do a nice line in sweet black olives with chillies these days - dead nippy as my 4 year old nephew would say!

The truth is, I am now beginning to accept that it is not easy to change a lifestyle which has grown out of the Presbyterian work ethic. Mortality may still be a cheap price to pay for existence, but wouldn't it be great if you could fund the whole enterprise with a little less effort. In fact during the short days and long dark nights, as my seasonal affective disorder kicks in, the only thing which keeps me going has the downfall of the working man for many years - beer.

I think beer is a truly wonderful drink. High in fibre and calories, I am convinced that it is actually good for you despite what the critics and puritans say. It is, after all, a fine natural product: if you ignore all the nasty factory produced muck which sadly floods the market. With this in mind, I count myself fortunate that temperence is not, and has never been, one of my virtues. I count myself doubly fortunate in living within five minutes walking time of many fine ale houses - one of which, The Three Judges, is regularly voted 'Pub of the year' by my local branch of CAMRA. And I am truly spoiled in having a fine supplier of carry-out pakora situated conveniently between the pub and my house.

Archeologists tell us that beer has been brewed for as long as men have wanted to go out and get pissed. They have discovered that the ancient Egyptians made a heady brew, though the rumour that pictograms discovered on tomb walls represent stills from Egyptians Behaving Badly are sadly mistaken. So complete in fact has been the residue from Egyptian beer discovered in tombs that a replica ale can now be bought - and who says history is boring.

One of the other great things about beer is that it can be both a solitary and group pass-time. Now before all you harpies start jumping to the conclusion that I am some sort of sad lonely individual who keeps his thoughts company with pint after pint, I'm talking about taking a good book down to the pub and having no more than a couple of glasses and a damn good read. It is all together a far less intensive type of session than the group sport practised by formation drinking teams the country over.

Indeed, for without the aid of a safety net and deprived of the benefits of nose-clips and shower caps teams of drinkers spend every weekend refining their art and competing with some of the finest imbibers in the country in some of the most competitive venues known. The Prize? Why death or glory. Although this is not death as we have come to know it (you know DEATH). It is rather the kind of death which is cured the following morning with a can of Irn Bru (God bless you Mr. Barr) and two Nurofen.

The glory side of it - as best I can recall of these dark distant days - is best accomplished down at your local night club. A few drinks to limber up, then some traditional bar exercises. You know the ones - you and your mates stand at 90 degrees to the bar. With a pint in your right hand you rest your elbow on the bar (usually in a small puddle of sticky liquid) and, in seamless unison you all say, 'Ooh, I don't fancy yours much, hahahahahahaha!'

Now that you are suitably flexible, you decide that a short walk is in order. A short walk to the middle of the dance floor that is. You ask that girl you've been eyeing for a dance (she's currently dancing with her friend of course). 'Excuse me, would you like to dance?', you shout through the racket. She looks back at you as if you had asked her to lance a boil on your buttock and suck out the puss. Undaunted, you ask again. She shrugs her shoulders and looks at her friend with an expression which says, 'Why don't you go to the bar and con his pals out of a couple of Bacardi and cokes whilst I dance with this loser?'

You are, of course, completely oblivious to this little vignette because ever since she shrugged her acceptance of your irresistible dance offer you have been peering back at your mates, grinning like the village idiot and holding both thumbs aloft like Paul McCartney had never thought of it. You dance the distant frug that people do at these places and all hopes of striking up an intimate conversation are thwarted by snoop doggy whatever his name is comin' at ya at 120 decibels.

Glory indeed. Isn't beer wonderful. Needless to say, this wouldn't happen in the south of France because people there still talk to one another. Even the sullen teenagers have an openness about them which should be the envy of everybody here (it isn't, of course). The pecks on the cheeks and the firm handshakes which permeate French society are the backbone of a truly friendly nation. So when I do get there, and get to know my local provencal patron, every time I order a drink from him I shall warmly shakes his hand and peck both cheeks in gratitude for just being there to serve me and talk with me.

Due South

During the past few years of my working life I have been, and still am, largely motivated by money. As a child I would scrimp and save and spend many happy evenings counting my accumulated stash. I remember though, at the age of about 7 or 8, reaching the princely sum of £3.50 or so and blowing the lot on a new motor for my lego train set. This unfortunately set the save/spend pattern for my later life; a habit that I have tried, and failed to shake off.

Not that I want to pass my days bathing in pools of crisp bank notes (of particularly large denominations naturally). I would however, like to be in better control of my finances and feel less inclined to blow any accumulated savings I may have on curry and beer.

What I do want though, eventually, is to have sufficient financial independence to be able to follow my calling to move to the South of France and do, more or less, nothing too much for the rest of my natural born days other than spend time with my wife, read a bit, write a bit, listen to some music and play my guitar a bit - maybe even have some friends round from time to time (remembering though my dear old Grandmother saying to me that both fish and guests begin to stink after three days).

Now I don't actually think I am asking for too much. I do not, after all, wish to become state dependent, whether it is this island state or that mainland state. All I ask is a modest means to earn a living, better weather and a reliable and inexpensive supply of olives, pastis and red wine; all served to me in the charmingly simple way of a provencal patron.

This seemingly simple goal is harder than you might imagine to achieve. Oh I know that there are people who just pack everything in and buy a one way ticket for the ferry, but in my mind, in order to make this move I must actually be able to support myself and my wife; and as things stand, I can hardly support a fence post in a light breeze with some help from several strong friends.

So there you have it in a nutshell. Despite my best efforts to "put a few bob by", I remain as broke today as I was when I started working all those years ago. I think I must suffer from an undiagnosed kind of incontinence with money.

But please don't think I have become depressed by this apparent lack of progress in achieving my ambition; for despite my complete lack of anything resembling a pot of gold I am happier now than I have ever been. What's that? 'Quality of life dear boy!', I hear the smarter ones saying through mouths stuffed full of coffee and croissants. Even the more cynical amongst you will be saying 'Aye, you have to have a dream to keep you going'. And I freely admit that both seem to be true in many ways.

Certainly in the last few years, both my life, and attitude to it, has changed dramatically for the better. I have married a woman I love, and who loves me back. I have my own flat more or less in the place I always wanted one. And I even get paid for doing a day's work which, more often than not, I quite enjoy.

'So what the bloody hell are you complaining about?', I can now hear both sides of the camp say.

Well, I'm not really complaining because I'm pretty much content with things as they are. Not because of what I do to keep myself financially afloat in a sea of debt, but because I enjoy the rest of the time I have to myself, and the time I share with others I care about. I believe in working for a living but also subscribe more to the "work to live" school of thought rather than the "live to work" ethic which so often prevails in today's competitive job market. Having said that, I also believe in getting paid as much as possible so that you can work less and less and do all the other things you enjoy more and more.

So where does this leave me and my yearning for Mediterranean sunshine? To be honest I'm not sure; perhaps those that say you have to have a dream to keep yourself going are right enough. Then again, what use is having a dream if you don't make any effort to achieve it, otherwise the autoroute du soleil would be littered with shattered dreams.

If you want my advice, do everything in your power to do what you want. Take French lessons, buy a French car, drink French wine (this is especially important as it helps to blur the harsh reality that you are drinking it in the comfort of your English speaking garret whilst looking at the rain stream down your window), eat French cheese and anything else which comes to mind which will either francophile you or raise money for MtF (Move to France) day.

Anything that is except write a an irregular blog that probably nobody will ever read because that is my chosen route, and I'm rather hoping that after a year or so of these thoughts my someone will help me realize my calling and will pay me to actually move there to write a Provencal diary. That would suit me fine; nothing fancy, a small cottage, with a couple of bedrooms and a sunny veranda and a reliable and inexpensive supply of olives, pastis and red wine; all served to me in the charmingly simple way of a provencal patron.

Who am I? I’m a nearly forty company director who is constantly asking himself, 'why must I work?'.

Mal de detoxification

I know I’m not the only one to suffer, but January sees me enter a particularly dark depression that takes me weeks to come out of. Even though the nights are drawing out once more, January seems darker and more melancholy than other months of the year, the combined result perhaps of the long slog from the distant memory of the summer holiday into winter, and the excess of the festive period. I hate it with a passion: it’s cold and wet, and dark more than it’s light.

As I struggle on, I convince myself that I need to rid my body of all the toxins that have built up over Christmas and New Year even though I’m not completely convinced that this latest fad isn’t just the invention of all the companies that peddle their products to help with this process.

My own particular take on detoxification, which I recommend wholeheartedly, involves a simple regime of restricting coffee intake to just one cup in the morning, with breakfast., drinking more water than I normally do, and keeping alcohol consumption down to just two or three units a day. Occasionally, I do take a cup of coffee later in the day as well, but hey, so what.

In other words, I haven’t really changed my lifestyle at all, and while my friends are all on various combinations of cabbage soup, hi-carb, hi-protein, water and fruit, raw vegetables, green tea or goodness knows what else, I have carried on regardless. They all look and feel terrible, whilst I on the other hand, well, I look no different at all and frankly feel no different either. The reason for this, I am convinced, is that the main drivers behind my lifestyle do not come from my diet but from the fact I run around like the proverbial blue-arsed fly from morning until night. Frankly, if I didn’t drink all that coffee, wine and beer I’d be a lot worse off.

Now from my knowledge of life in France, I’d guess that detoxification is a phrase most probably restricted to chemical and waste processing use. The idea that the human body might need help to remove toxins normally pretty effectively dealt with in the regular way would be anathema to most French people – although given their predilection for suppositories it could be an enema to them (oh dear!).

Life in France has continued pretty effectively for years on their diet of meat, fish, wine and brandy, not to mention rich butter pastries, white bread and several hundred varieties of cheese and other diary products. It is not uncommon for people on their way to work in the morning to visit their local café and order a coffee and a brandy – un café cognac – a million miles from the sickly milky mess most people here get from their local Starbucks.

What they are also very good at is lunch. I know plenty of people, me included, who while away their lunch hour (now there’s an oxymoron if ever I wrote one) at their desk, grabbing a hurried sandwich, a chocolate bar, some crisps and juice – all that sort of thing, all the while sifting through e-mail or reading papers and getting crumbs in the keyboard. This is such a common phenomenon that it has a term – eating al desko.

This of courses forces the question. Who the hell thinks this is such a great idea that it deserves recognition? Honestly, is this such a healthy society that it obsesses about detoxing the body, but fails to consider the effects that actually not taking a proper break and eating a decent lunch can have on your wider health and vitality.

And even if the practise is declining somewhat, France, and to be honest many other Mediterranean countries, has survived perfectly well with a regular two hour lunch break in the middle of the day when all decent working citizens switch off and sit down with their friends, or go home to their families for a square meal and some quality time.

This practise is so much part of the culture that even parking charges are lifted between 12 and 2 each day – how cool is that. But what’s is more impressive is the life that buzzes through each and every café, restaurant and open space in France during that time. To people from the west coast of Scotland it must seem like a carnival every day, but to the native inhabitants it’s just what they do. It’s normal life and they seem just fine about it.

Our whole culture seems to have turned it’s priorities on its head. We are asked to work more and more within more demanding environments. We are not asked, but there is one argument that suggests we are expected to work through our permitted breaks. What we do eat at lunchtime is hastily consumed without any discussion or social interaction with friends or colleagues let alone family. We are selling ourselves short with this practise.

Take me to France any day. I guarantee I’ll work just as hard, but perhaps I’ll be better off for it. My family life will be respected and supported, the food will be better and if nothing else the sun will shine a lot more than it does here.