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I’m boringly predictable with my tea – first thing in the morning it’s let the dog out to have an empty out and I’ll make a mug of Earl Grey to take back to bed with me.
Late morning is a mug of either Orange Jaipur or black tea with orange and cinnamon.
Mid-afternoon a mug of Twinings No 9 and bedtime is a herbal tea either valerian or lemon / ginger.
We do have a pack of plain ordinary PG tips but that’s only for visitors and we invariably end up throwing the pack away before it’s finished because it ends up being years past its use by date.
Can’t drink coffee – makes me throw up for some reason, although I love the smell of it.
Black tea – usually Earl or Lady Grey or Twinings No 9
When I’m naughty “full fat” coke, when I’m being good Pepsi Max – no more than a can a day – otherwise good old H2O
Used to be “force fed” (probably an exaggeration but made to drink) Lucozade if I was ill as a kid – put me off the stuff for life. Similar with Ribena, when I had my tonsils out as a 5 year old my Mother thought it was the elixir for recovery – all it did was put me off the stuff for years.
On the very rare occasions I have alcohol then it’s, most likely, a G&T or a full bodied red if with a meal. If it’s really hot I may have a lager shandy
When I was about 18, whisky was my spirit of choice. I worked in a pub and one day I worked a morning and evening shift, with a wedding in-between. I started on the whisky around lunchtime and didn’t stop until I passed out just after closing time. After that even the smell made me want to throw up and it was over 30 years before I had a whisky again and that’s only because we were on holiday in Scotland and the place we were staying the owner was into his whisky, I think he had almost every single malt available – and he eventually persuaded me to try it again – I managed to drink a couple without throwing up but, even today it’s not my spirit of choice.
Lovely story Gamble
I recall once having a very robust conversation with the marketing manager of Brighton racecourse.
When I was writing my reviews of British racecourses I made the, factually correct, observation that Brighton is the only UK racecourse with a housing estate in the middle of the course.
She thought it was outrageous I should mention it and demanded I removed it from the review ….. needless to say it remained.
If I recall correctly most of the City of London used to close half day on Derby day as all the city types headed to Epsom whilst the “common people” congregated on the Hill.
The Hill is still a regular gathering place for the Traveller community and they certainly add to the flavour on The Hill.
The Hill is still popular but nowhere near as it was in it’s heyday.
This pic is of The Hill on 1948 Derby Day
Whilst the is The Hill in 2012
Epsom is one of those funny courses, totally devoid of any atmosphere most meetings but coming to life two days a year.
I spent my early years living about four miles from the course as the crow flies and I have vague memories of, one day a year, the traffic outside our house increasing dramatically and my Grandad telling me about a horse race called The Derby and we would go outside at watch The Queen’s car pass by outside.
Over the years I’ve enjoyed the race from many locations, the Grandstand, The Hill – handy if you’re a cheapskate as it’s free, you don’t see much of the racing but I walked to the start one year and the atmosphere was very different than at most other meetings.
I also had the privilege of watching the race from the roof of the Queens Stand on a few occasions and that gave a fantastic view of the race.
What many people do not realise and you don’t appreciate at home is how steep a climb the first few furlongs are.
Back in the late 80’s, when I lived in Cardiff the pub was, almost, at the bottom of my garden and it was definitely my second (arguably first) home – so much so if I missed an evening they would ring to check I was OK.
Regular lock-ins, two or three times a week, and often back the next morning at 06:00 for a pre-golf breakfast.
If there wasn’t a pub lock-in I’d have private “lock-in” at home with one of the barmaids before she went back home to her husband and kids – those were the days.
When the landlord eventually moved on, it wasn’t the same and one night I was over there, out of habit, where I had about 7-8 pints and I wasn’t enjoying it and it dawned on me I was drinking all that amount and it wasn’t affecting me – so I stopped drinking that night.
I didn’t touch a drop for about 5 years.
Now the only time I’ll generally have a drink is on holiday and then it’s only a glass of wine with dinner or the odd G&T. Away from holidays I may have a G&T about once a month.
To be honest I don’t miss the drinking at all, I can still have a good night out with soft drinks, with the added entertainment of watching those who cannot take their booze.
We’ll end up going back to the pre- May 1961 days when most betting was done on the backstreets with unlicensed bookies – replacing a perceived problem with a genuine problem.
If I were still in a position where I had some influence my advice to the Conservative party would be:-
a) get the Fixed Term Parliament law scrapped asap
b) depending on how COVID is going, call a snap election either October this year or May next year – it couldn’t be any later than May, otherwise you will be in Public Inquiry territory. Labour would be unlikely to have pulled back their deficit in the polls, most of the population would be fully vaccinated, life should be returning to “normal” and the economic impact will not have peaked.
It was riveting TV yesterday, although most of it was stating the bleeding obvious.
I’m a lifelong Conservative, for many years an activist, but even I will admit this is the most incompetent Government in my lifetime and that says a lot having lived through the Premierships of Wilson, Heath and Callaghan.
I was saying before he was elected leader that Johnson was not suited to be PM, he was lazy as Mayor of London, why would he be any better with even greater responsibility. He’s singularly incapable of recognising the truth, all he cares about is Boris.
Hancock, I despise with a vengeance – I can only assume he has some serious dirt on Johnson, that’s the only reason I can see he’s keeping his job. Anyone who has worked in the NHS will tell you he has spouted bare faced lies in the House and at briefings – so why should anything he says be taken on trust? The holding back of tests so he could reach his 100,000 tests a day target was blindingly obvious.
As for sending untested residents back to care homes, that is simply criminally negligent.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think any government, however competent, would struggle to deal with this crisis but having an incompetent Government has made matters worse.
I’m officially diabetic, although I yo-yo across the boundary back to pre-diabetic when I get disciplined with my eating.
I’ve given up with spot tests and just settle for the HbA1C figures – mainly because they’re the “honest” ones and cannot be cheated.
I had been hovering just on the right side with the numbers but the last two were on the wrong side and to be perfectly honest it’s wholly down to lockdown, where I’ve been eating too many wrong things due to boredom and I don’t have the discipline to avoid the bad stuff – thankfully I’m a great fan of the less evil dark chocolate.
Ironically I was much better off when I worked shifts – OK you tend to eat really crap food, especially on nights, but you were so busy you didn’t get much time to eat too much of it and if you were lucky enough to get a quiet half-hour you would use the time to grab 40 winks rather than eat.
Two of the group look to be happy.
The look on the girls face would be twitching my safeguarding radar.
I realise it’s not scientific but based on my experience working on the ambulances I’m surprised at the differential between men and women in these figures, I would actually have thought the figure for women would be higher than for men.
Although it’s maybe friends and others are more concerned about female binge drinkers which means we get more calls to them.
