All entries for August 2006

A woman's place…

Many proverbs are wise and thought–provoking. However on scanning through the appendix of my dictionary (as you do) I came upon some real gems. Not least:

If you cannot ride two horses at once you should not be in the circus

Which seems like perfectly good advice, or:

If you would be happy for a week take a wife; if you would be happy for a month kill a pig; but if you would be happy all your life plant a garden

Then there are the incredibly un–PC phrases, like:

One Englishman can beat three Frenchmen

Surely not at football, or:

A woman, a dog and a walnut tree, the more you beat them the better they be

And of course there are the Yorkshire ones:

Hear all, see all, say nowt, tak' all, keep all, gie nowt, and if tha ever does owt for nowt do it for thysen

To finish with here is the weather forecast:

If Candlemas day be sunny a bright, winter will have another flight; if Candlemas day be cloudy with rain, winter is gone, and won't come again

: 14 Aug 2006 09:11 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Am I Binging? Alcohol is bad for you shocker

In shocking news reports this week it turns out that alcohol is bad for you. This has long been a view held by readers of the Daily Mail, however the rest of the population was in ignorance until a paper was published on the topic.

Dr. Mary Beer headed up the research team who spent many hours sitting in pubs drinking beer and eating crisps. Their findings were that Binge Drinking, the latest craze sweeping the nation, can result in being 'quite drunk'. Research also suggested that sobriety/drunkeness is a binary state – you're either drunk or not. This contradicts previous thinking that a person would get gradually more and more drunk as they polished of increasing numbersof alcoholic beverages. This means that you can feel fine one minute but the next you could be dressed like rambo and singing Dolly Parton on the karaoke machine.

Alarmingly, many people don't know what constitutes a binge. Responses to a survey caried out at B&Q varied from 'one pint of beer and a packet of peanuts' to 'a hammer, five nails and a plank of wood'. Accepted wisdom has it that four pints is a binge for a man whereas three is enough for a woman. In truth it is much more complicated than this with factors such as the amount the person has eaten, whether or not it is a full moon and the proximity of the individual to Salisbury cathedral all playing and important role. Indeed the lack of knowledge about bingeing is such that you could yourself be on a binge right now and not even know it.

Alcohol effects different people in different ways, some become friendly and outgoing whereas others become violent or develop an irrational attraction to the barmaid. More recently there have been numerous cases of people spontaneously turning into Tom Cruise – no explanation has yet been provided for this. Also kebabs become a desirable food–stuff. Recently a man from Bury tried eating a kebab whilst sober and was immediately rushed to hospital where he remains in intensive care.

As a counterpoint there are still scientists who maintain that a glass of wine a day is good for you, unfortunately this is only if you use it as shampoo. To stay safe from binge drinking the News of the World will be publishing pictures of pubs in your area so you don't accidentally walk into one.

: 05 Aug 2006 10:10 |  Tags: Drinking |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem