Poets and Booze
A heroic one pound lost this week, according to the scales at the Slimming World meeting. I say heroic, because I helped celebrate three birthdays this week and was presented with all sorts of temptation, some of which I succumbed to; vodka, cake and cheesy things. A little bit of everything bad. There was much more on offer – I had to tie myself to a figurative mast to avoid the siren song of chocolate fingers.
And what is a series of parties without a series of drinks? Nothing! Robert Graves said in The White Goddess that wine is the drink of poets - he's right, but slimming poets need vodka. The prosaic reason is that vodka is low in calories; I like it because of the sense of warm and fuzzy power it brings when ingested in the company of something fizzy (and sugar free - can't be going wild here, can we...).
In the company of vodka, one is capable - or at least convinced that one is capable - of surviving anything. Orpheus on vodka would never have looked back - he'd have had a Ready Brek glow and a need to avoid bumping into roots and tripping over stones. Keats would surely have beaten consumption on a diet of vodka - it would have been as if Italy had come to him.
The only problem is, they wouldn't have been such great poets. Milton writing post-vodka? Paradise Be Buggered! Keats? Ode to a Bloodied Nose. Wine leaves one in a much more reflective, languid hungover state (assuming you've drunk water too - if not then the headache is blinding). Vodka hangover is a hard and relentless state that is not exactly pain but constantly refers itself to the body's pain centres at the expense of thought - and that's no use at all for poetry.
But hell, it's fun once in a while - and once I've lost a bit more weight, I'll treat myself to some decent wine. In the meantime, I'll just have to try and write without the hindrance or help of alcohol.
