RECENTLY there's been all sorts of doom and gloom about extending pub hours, with forecasts of more drunkenness on the streets, which in some areas will sadly be all too true. The government says it won't, but then the government doesn't have to patrol the streets at night and trip over slumped inebriated bodies or avoid pools of vomit. The real problem is that for years drinks manufacturers have been producing more and more drinks palatable to the tastes of youngsters. There was a time not all that long ago when youngsters had a stark choice if they wanted to start drinking alcohol. A pint of mild ale, a pint of bitter, a bottle of brown ale or a mixture of two or more. All of these were an acquired adult taste and it took a bit of training to get used to them. Then came lager, somewhat blander, and now all these sweet, sugary fruity drinks which hide their kick of alcohol. They're like those punches they serve at some parties, where the host has used up all the leftover Christmas booze (never in my house, there isn't any), added some cheap bottles of lemonade and a tin of fruit salad and the unwary guest helps him or herself to what is a lethal mix of tequila, white rum, gin, bourbon, banana liqueur, Benedictine and Uncle George's home made rhubarb wine. Four glasses later you were either lying flat on your back under a table or outside in the car park watching a police officer fishing out his breathalyser kit. Girls, at one time, were expected to drink halves of bitter, you didn't get much choice, no matter what you asked for you usually got a half. Then came the advent of one of the first drinks aimed specifically at girlies. Babycham. Everyone fell in love with this fizzy perry which came in sophisticated glasses and with the addition of a cherry. An olive might have been more sophisticated but Babycham girls didn't like anything foreign. Swiftly following was Cherry B, a very sweet port-like drink, and something I seem to remember called a Pony, rather syrupy and sherry-like, the sort of sherry the teetotal father of the bride orders at a wedding to be served to incoming guests, most of whom he doesn't know nor will ever see again so he doesn't care as long as it doesn't cost more than £2.99 a bottle, although you usually have to take your own bottle. None of these were particularly alcoholic and you would have had to drink a considerable number of Babychams to get to the stage of vomiting on a policeman's foot. The boys, of course, wouldn't have been seen dead drinking any of these, whereas today they can drink highly alcoholic sweet drinks out of manly bottles. There were exceptions though. A colleague of mine couldn't abide the taste of any beer or spirits, and as wine was never readily available in pubs in those days he always ordered Moussec. This was a small bottle of either sweet or dry fizzy wine, slightly upmarket from Babycham because it did have a tinge of the grape in it. My colleague liked it, and wouldn't be budged from it, even if this meant that the other blokes in the pub at lunchtime flatly refused to buy him a drink if he didn't have a 'proper' one. There was no way any of them would go to the bar and ask for two pints of bitter, a pint of Newcastle Brown and a dry Moussec. This was especially true in the evening with a pub full of local rugby club types who could spot a bloke drinking dry Moussec a mile away and were apt to get a little feisty towards the end of the night. It was better if I was there, because then they could pretend the Moussec was mine and plonk my pint of bitter down in front of him, and we could surreptitiously swap them, so I probably owed my permanent invitation to join them all in the pub to my colleague's drinking preference. Nobody was rude enough to mention people's sexual orientation in those days but it was a considerable surprise to some of our number when one day he produced a very pretty fiancé who solved everyone's problem by drinking halves of Guinness so they could pretend the Moussec was for her, and the hearty masculine half of the black stuff for him!
