Surely it's no coincidence that they call whisky the water of life or uisce beatha. For those of us (un)lucky enough to have been brought up in the alcohol-imbued culture of Northern Europe it constitutes a major part of our schizophrenic existence. The part where you get to unwind and say all the things you once wished you'd said to someone else who required setting straight - though admittedly in another time and place where they may or may not be entirely appropriate.
There you have the British love affair with alcohol. I was having a drink with a Spanish friend this evening and he was trying to articulate his dissatisfaction with York. He could only come out with words like boring, uptight, constrained. But what he was alluding to was the strange homage to limitations which we bring to social relations. It's essentially about repression and denial. How different life would be if we could learn to express ourselves and not see emotional disfigurement as an ideal. Stiff upper lip my ars*.
There you have the British love affair with alcohol. I was having a drink with a Spanish friend this evening and he was trying to articulate his dissatisfaction with York. He could only come out with words like boring, uptight, constrained. But what he was alluding to was the strange homage to limitations which we bring to social relations. It's essentially about repression and denial. How different life would be if we could learn to express ourselves and not see emotional disfigurement as an ideal. Stiff upper lip my ars*.
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