Drunk is poetry

As human beings continue their never ending search for self destruction I thought a light-hearted missive might be in order.

I was reading something or other not long back (Wodehouse I think) when a drunken character was described as ‘in his cups’.
A delightful expression I thought and it got me thinking.

What other expressions for drunkenness are a credit to the English language?
In my time I’ve heard, or used, wankered, twatted, pissed, muntered, bladdered, battered, hammered, arseholed, plastered, caned and of course the ubiquitous fucked; the list goes on.



But what of those expressions that show the true diversity of this jewel of languages? That illustrate the endless possibilities of English to articulate one state of being in countless ways.

‘In his cups’ I particularly like, and is possibly of Roman or biblical origin.
‘Shedded’ is one I’ve heard and apparently is short for ‘my shed has collapsed and taken most of the fence with it’. Possibly not the easiest way to verbalise your drunkenness.

The Aussies have given us ‘paralytic’ since the early 20th century, and ‘shot full of holes’, which they lifted from the Kiwis in world War One, and good on them for it.

‘Smashed’ sounds like it’s a modern invention to me, but comes from an old American saying ‘smashed as a brandy peg’. Smash being a type of brandy apparently.
‘Pickled’ is wonderful, as is ‘piddled’. ‘Pie-eyed’, is a peculiarly American term that reached our shores in the late 1800’s.

It’s amazing how each word or expression brings to mind a very specific level of drunkenness. A man who was ‘tipsy’ or ‘squiffy’ or ‘sozzelled’ wouldn’t hit his wife would he? But someone who is ‘tanked up’ might.

They are also, like much slang, time capsules that appear and disappear in short time periods. ‘Swipey’ for example is recorded from 1844 but had pretty much died out by 1900, ‘rat-arsed’ is a wonderful newer invention, first heard from teenagers in the ‘80’s.

In the late 1700’s you might have ‘swallowed a hare’ or if in port ‘swallowed a sailor’. Something that might get you an odd look in Brighton in the 21st century.
The 1920’s had a string of lovely descriptions that really put you right there amongst the flappers; ‘ossified’ ‘spifflicated’, ‘canned’, ‘corked’, ‘scrooched’, ‘jazzed’, ‘zozzled’, ‘owled’, ‘embalmed’, ‘lit’, ‘potted’, or ‘fried to the hat’.
All of which applied presumably to that wonderful chronicler of the jazz age F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The amount are incredible, the diversity staggering, it’s a book topic not a blog entry so I’ll leave you to seek out you own and bask in the glow of our wonderful language.

And forgive me if this blog entry is a little disjointed, I was at a friend’s stag do last weekend and was ‘crapulent’ to the point of being as ‘stewed as a fresh boiled owl’.

Just read: Ham On Rye by Charles Bukowski
Listening to: Official sountrack to the motion picture Kick Ass.

Riots? same as it ever was.

I find myself somewhat conflicted over the current spate of rioting that’s breaking out like unsightly zits all over this country. My natural left-leaning nature is being sorely tested by a sneaky little right wing side of me that is inflamed by certain aspects of modern society.
Whilst rioting itself is nothing new, in London or anywhere else, and will always be part and parcel of life in Britain (my favourites are the Luddite riots of the early 19th century. They smashed machines up, these current ones were organised on Blackberries. Go figure)
I can’t help feeling that what these youths need is a bloody good hiding. To quote Pink Floyd ‘a short, sharp shock’.
But how can I have such a violent lurch to the right? Am I, indeed, becoming more conservative as I get older?
The 20-something me would have delighted in the chaos and anarchy, but then what did he know?
Nothing, he was an idiot.
And that’s the main issue here, young people are stupid. I’m not talking about the remarkable kids that appear week after week on University Challenge, who are au fait with the laws of motion, the pelvic bone of the Amazonian tree frog and the periodic table, they are a different breed and we’ll need them later. They’ll probably be the ones in 30 or 40 years sitting on committees trying to work out what should be done about the rioters in New London smashing up hover car showrooms.
No, the problem we have is that to be young means to know better than everyone else, when actually you know the square root of fuck all.
And how the youth enjoy their ignorance, it’s a badge of honour to know nothing, but they still demand respect for doing so. See, I can feel a rant coming on. And that’s no good. Regardless of the feelings they evoke we need to look at the issues that have caused these riots.
Could it be that creating not only a society, but a entire civilisation, on consumer greed, envy, 24 hour advertising, bad credit and a scrabbling need to possess ‘things’ and ‘stuff’ to fill the empty voids in our lives that used to be filled by blindly following God and King and Country, might have been a bad model?
But that’s the dream we’ve been sold and as long as uneducated disenfranchised young people, whose own parents were the same, keep being told what they ‘deserve’ without being given any means of achieving it we’ll continue to reap what we sow.
How are your cuts to public services looking now Prime Minister?

Reading: The Wine-Dark Sea by the incomparable Patrick O'Brian
Listening to: Mozart's Flute Concerto No. 1 in G Major, amongst others