EVERYDAY DRINKING by Kingsley Amis

Not everyone is cut out to be a drinker. It's an exacting devotion. Appreciation and dedication are not to to be found at TGIFs or mall beer joints, unless the serious drinker has no other choice, since everyone knows that drinking alone is a serious indication of alcoholism. As long as there's one other living person in the bar ie the bartender, then you're spared any accusations of being a drunk.

What's the difference between drunks and alcoholics?

Drunks don't go to meeting and neither did Kingsley Amis, who posthumously published EVERYDAY DRINKING in which the author decalred about his morning after, "I have a hang-over bad enough to think I'm sprouting antlers."

Mr. Amis was not a wine sipper.

In fact he resented anyone drinking wine other than at dinner as a lightweight.

I'm sure he would have forgiven a Danish sailor/friend on the Isle of Wight for drinking rose wine, since his doctor had warned Kurt that vodka was destroying his liver.

Wine would have been kinder, except the Dane drank 16 bottles of rose per day. Five before breakfast. I'm sure that consumption level would pass Mr. Amis' demands.

Mr. Amis favored cocktails, preferably a gin tonic. He would go to the cinema with all the appropriate mixers in his pockets; lemon, ice, tonic, glasses, and gin. A man for the ages who never let his unconsciousness be his guide only his companion as do most men in Pattaya, drinking capitol of the Orient.

EVERYDAY DRINKING has an extensive list of drinks, but like most drunks we like to keep things simple.

Faster to get it down.

I have perused this Amis collection several times at the bookstore. I doubt it will make it to the lending library, but if it does it won't be staying there long, because I have fast hands.