Ongoing Learning

I am a master in few fields, but I think I can safely say, without fear of angry accusations, that I know those few fields and master them masterfully. These fields are, in no particular order: the Dewey Decimal system, making the under-fives laugh, having an encyclopedic knowledge of every Sinead O'Connor song ever recorded and achieving alcoholic intoxication. They don't let your friends rank you in this shit on facebook but if they did, I'd be #1. After intensive investigation from my R & D team, I can now announce a new sub-genre of my last and I think we can all agree, most fabulous talent: Dinner Drunk.

I guess I'm dealing with laymen here so I won't dress it up in fancy terms that us scientists like to use. You guys know about normal drunkeness, right? You have a few drinks and start feeling loads happier than you did before you had a few drinks and suddenly you're hugging your best friend from junior infants and telling everyone how beautiful they are. Yeah, you guys get it.

Now, Dinner Drunk is a cousin of regular-style drunk where you pretend to be all fancy and put on your nice dress and eat fancy food that some other people cooked for you. Because you're eating your fancy food and pretending to be all middle-class and shit, you disregard the numerous bottles of wine you toss down, 'cos wine is all fancy and doesn't count as real booze. You have fancy conversations with your dinner companions about increasingly abstract topics and generally believe that the problems of the world are being polished off along with your rhubarb crumble.

You pay the bill, over-generously tip your waitress and stumble outside to procure yourself a 'real' drink. HALT, soldier! This is where the problems start. Dinner Drunk is a curious phenomenon whereby the participant feels alright because of all the shiny cutlery-ed trappings of dinner when in fact he or she is in the same state as your average wino at 9am on a Saturday morning: nicely juiced up and thirsty for more.

Woe! you shriek, I knows it! I have known the lure of clean crystal and fabric napkins also! Woe begone, say I: there is hope. Friends, am I #1 in fictional facebook leagues for nothing? Nay! Here comes your solace: Dinner Drunk, because of it's close ties with the dining-out bourgeoisie, is one of the most respectable kinds of drunk there is! It totally out ranks Cider Drunk and Niteclub Drunk, and is only pipped to the title of The Best Drunk, Ever by Wedding Drunk which, if I can make a sporting comparison for the common man here, is the Chelsea of Drunk: exquisitely put-together and fearfully unbeatable. Wait, what?

Dinner Drunk is how middle-aged depression can be assuaged and a non-existent social life overcome. Dinner Drunk, like Rich Drunk, totally doesn't count and you can't be held responsible for anything that occurs. In fact, since Dinner Drunk actively supports our catering staff during this critical financial clench and eating in snazzy restaurants makes a dining drunk feel super-posh and intellectual, you might say that he or she is in fact behaving as any fine, upstanding citizen should.

So there you have it: information, explanation, debate. Next week: Dewey numbers!

Infamy, infamy!

Ins. Hunt said Mr O’Brien claimed that he had gone for a drive on Sunday October 1 after arguing with his wife the previous night when he caught her kissing a mutual friend.He said he drove his own car to Tramore and sat in it reading the Sunday papers and listening to the radio.

Yes, Tramore is the prime alibi for murder suspects. Yes, we are proud of this fact. We promote newspaper-reading and radio listening amongst our best-loved tourist attractions, that and conviction-dodging. Why yes, you can come visit! No, we can't promise you won't be spotted on CCTV near the spot your wife's body was found at the exact time you claim to have spent a pleasurable afternoon reading newspapers in your car in lovely Tramore. We're not that good.