A few hours ago I went on a journey. A short 16 minute hop to a town nearby where the happy folk live (to quote “The Gorillas”). Only a small group of beer aficionados made up our merry band but nevertheless we arrived, met friends, drank amazing beer from cask, bottle and keg, some rum and even a cocktail without incident.
As per usual we made our pant-wettingly close dash for the last train back to Stoke. For once we arrived with minutes to spare & happily chatted as we waited for our “chauffeur driven carriage” home…
Soon our train came into view and slowly pulled into the station chockablock full of suitably seasonally lubricated revellers. The doors opened and just as people started to alight, what can only described as a cowardly drunken wanker, grabbed another passenger by the lapels and hurled him off the train to the concrete platform a foot or so below and swiftly without pause made good his escape without looking back…
The victim of this cowardly act, although dazed, without fuss, picked himself up, got back on the train & joined his, wife, (girlfriend, date, partner) dusted himself off and astonishingly in an amazing display of tolerance just laughed it off.
From then on, all the way home I had the most overwhelming urge to shake this guys hand and tell him how well “he’d handled the situation” and “what a bigger man he was” all of which even now seems very true. I didn’t, as I assumed that after that he’d just want to be left alone , but I was still left with a feeling of well…why?
What is it in some people ,that after a couple of drinks or several, makes it ok in their seemingly minuscule brain to do that to another human being?
The risk, outcome and potential implications are obvious to me at least and I hope with all my heart that the aggressor has a long sleepless night worrying about his bullish act of drunken bravado.
Nevertheless tonight’s unpleasantness has wider, thought promoting connotations about alcohol consumption and how beer/alcohol is perceived by government and the media. I may be massively stereotyping here, but I’d put money on the likely highest strength beer having been partaken by most of folk on that train tonight as less than 5% abv, whereas I’d say with our group in truth that is probably the lowest.
So as I sit here (hopefully legibly) typing this, whilst drinking my Emelisse Buffalo Trace barrel aged barley wine, at 1 AM, I’m proof that our governments policies on targeting high strength beers as being the root of our societies evil are utter tosh. I didn’t need policing, was no burden on the NHS and in my blinkered view at least, am in full possession of all my faculties.. (I reserve the right to review this on reading tomorrow)
In short, it’s not what, or how much you drink, it’s how you drink it…..
Beersay 