One pint, two pint, three pint four. How many pints does it take to be an alcoholic. I am sat in my beloved Wetherspoons where I come for a cheap coffee in the morning. I see several tables of older men drinking pints at 09:00 hrs and I think how can they do it.

I myself may pop into the spoons in the after noon for a couple of cheeky ones and still see the same semi-retired men or women sinking pints and having a good chat with their friends. It made me think about the game of drinking and that difference between a problem drinker and causal boozer.  I have met characters throughout my life that have had a big appetite for booze yet have woken the next day brushed it off and got on with the day’s work.

My Irish friend is like this. He can sink a gallon of any booze then wakes the next day and cycles into the city to carry on with an important project. I remember my father talking about one of the bodyguards who would work with a very famous billionaire. He could put away a shed load of whisky, smoke plenty of cigars, and then get up the next morning and go for a ten mile run.

My Father too was a big drinker but he couldn’t always handle a drink and it would often end in battles at home with my Mother, very unpleasant. I think of the literary greats say Bukowski or Oliver Reed who had these gargantuan reputations for being excellent artists abut also excellent piss artists.

It can be easy to look up to these types and want to mimic their behaviours but as hard as  I try to mimic these supposed greats if I have more than two pints of an a evening I wake feeling like shit. I have learned to measure my drinking and leave it to a few beers at the weekends when I have the entire day off to recuperate.

I am clearly no Bukowski, or Reed or even George Best but still love a good pint. But these days its measured and I need a clear head to write with access to all the five senses too allow my intuition and  creativity flow through. Cheers to all boozers and casual drinkers everywhere.