An early front runner for woman of the year
Or person of the year, but that makes for a lousy headline.
C/O the Washington Post, introducing Barbara Holland, une femme d'un certain age, who has just had 'The Joy of Drinking' published:
"Stuck up here on this mountain, I have only two hobbies," she says. She raises the cigarette: "This is one." She raises the wineglass: "This is the other."..."I'm in favor of a little more sociability, a little more merriment, maybe even a little more singing and dancing."...She's in favor of joy but she feels it's under attack. She wrote the book as a protest against the decline of social drinking and the rise of broccoli, exercise and Starbucks"...."Booze, she writes, is "the social glue of the human race." As soon as humans stopped wandering around looking for berries and settled down to raise crops, they started creating wine and beer and, not coincidently, civilization".
She's right, isn't she? Should we buy a job lot and send them to Hewitt, Flint and the rest of the 'pilgrims' at the DoH?
And she wheeled out this anecdote : "during the Constitutional Convention, she writes, the 55 delegates took a day off to party and they knocked back "54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, eight of whiskey, 22 of port, eight of hard cider, and seven bowls of punch so large that, it was said, ducks could swim around in them. Then they went back to work and finished founding the new republic."
Now if only a few other nations had had such forward thinking midwives....
C/O the Washington Post, introducing Barbara Holland, une femme d'un certain age, who has just had 'The Joy of Drinking' published:
"Stuck up here on this mountain, I have only two hobbies," she says. She raises the cigarette: "This is one." She raises the wineglass: "This is the other."..."I'm in favor of a little more sociability, a little more merriment, maybe even a little more singing and dancing."...She's in favor of joy but she feels it's under attack. She wrote the book as a protest against the decline of social drinking and the rise of broccoli, exercise and Starbucks"...."Booze, she writes, is "the social glue of the human race." As soon as humans stopped wandering around looking for berries and settled down to raise crops, they started creating wine and beer and, not coincidently, civilization".
She's right, isn't she? Should we buy a job lot and send them to Hewitt, Flint and the rest of the 'pilgrims' at the DoH?
And she wheeled out this anecdote : "during the Constitutional Convention, she writes, the 55 delegates took a day off to party and they knocked back "54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, eight of whiskey, 22 of port, eight of hard cider, and seven bowls of punch so large that, it was said, ducks could swim around in them. Then they went back to work and finished founding the new republic."
Now if only a few other nations had had such forward thinking midwives....
Labels: United States
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 at 11:38 am.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
Boris had a good article about this in the Spectator and his accolytes are always hovering around this rather slippery subject.
So they didn't drink much, then.
Bloody lightweights. An urban legend is that the Rosslyn park rugby team of the 1970's skippered by Andy Ripley once went through 15 barrels in one weekend whilst on tour.
This is rudely O/T and I apologise. BBC headline: "Blair hails positive Libya talks." Given that Blair was the only one involved in "Libya talks" this looks as though he is on the last string of near-sanity.
Go to the BBC site, and you see that Blair is gurning without moderation or dignity, while Ghaddafi allows his hand to be clasped and squeezed sincerely, athough his focus is firmly on some desert horizon - not Blair, who is trying madly to engage his eye. Ghadaffi allows Blair to make his obeisance, but it too deserty-noble to acknowledge it. What a hoot.
They are both utterly daft.
The beeb also said that the UK was now going to supply Libya with various bits of armaments. Perhaps the Great Northern Ireland Sorter-Outer can send back all the stuff the IRA no longer need?
Sounds like a plan, Nomad!
I see on the Beeb's site that, continuing his Final Farewell Legacy World Tour, Blair is going to get crowned "chief" of some African nation or tribe or village or something. The Beeb's taken it off the site, which is too bad because it was the only joke they had on the site today.
He's been crowned a Chief of Peace in Sierra Leone. Given that he has started more wars than Prussia did in its *entire* history, that is pretty rich.
» Post a Comment