Just have one drink

Like many working-class children born in the 80s, I grew up attending the social club at weekends, dragged along by my parents.

Inside the blanket of smoke was suffocating, and your best Adidas jumper would stink of B & H gold for days after spending just an hour or two inside the lacquered wooden confines of the club.

It was here that the sport of drinking was properly observed. Men and women would often recount how many drinks they'd consumed in the previous session.

"Dave had 14 pints last week!"

"I had 6 pints and 5 double vodkas"

Spirits seemed to carry more weight in the alcohol point scoring system.

I took note of all of this as a kid, and at no point did anyone ever say:

"I enjoyed 1 drink last week".

Numbers Game

Drinking alcohol was a numbers game. It seemed like an easy way to gain acknowledgement from family and friends alike.

Sure, some would recoil at the notion of (me) drinking so much, but even that was a reaction which was perhaps better than not getting noticed in my mind at that time of life (teens and twenties).