High Sobriety by Jill Stark

Author:Jill Stark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000, SOC026000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2013-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

August

LAST NIGHT, FOR the first time since I stopped drinking, I didn’t feel like the odd one out. At a reunion dinner with friends from my Age traineeship of five years ago, the non-drinkers were equal in numbers to the drinkers. Of the eight of us, two were pregnant, one doesn’t drink, and then there was me, the social animal of our year — who, on our induction trip to Sydney, was one of the last to go to bed, after persuading everyone to have one more for the road and join me in a rendition of ‘Flower of Scotland’ — now sensible and sober. Three of them have since left The Age, and one works in our Canberra bureau, so we rarely get to catch up as a group.

It was a fun evening, with lively conversation, fond memories, and, for once, a mocktail list that was both interesting and reasonably priced. But as we spilled out onto the street around 11 o’clock, I was reminded of why I rarely venture into the city after 9.00 p.m. Young guys clutching cans of bourbon and Coke were hollering to their mates and jumping into the road, trying to hail cabs; girls in skimpy dresses smoked cigarettes and screamed out incoherently against the backdrop of an ambulance siren. We flagged down a cab and adopted a women-and-children-first policy, sending our pregnant friends home before the rest of the group.

As we drove out of the city, it seemed that Melbourne was one heaving mass of drunkenness. The staff that work in these late-night venues must have balls of steel.

I used to be one of them — I spent more than ten years working in bars. From my first job at 18, in Dad’s golf club, to an Irish pub in Christchurch, New Zealand, and a homely boozer in Melbourne, bar work taught me patience, diplomacy, and people skills. And it toughened me up. I learned pretty quickly how to escape the advances of drunk businessmen and how to defuse a fight before it started. Copping verbal abuse, wiping up spew, and being hit on by cavemen was just part of the job.

For the most part, I loved it. And I was good at it. At the Jekyll & Hyde in Edinburgh’s New Town — a horror-themed pub, where the toilets were hidden behind a false bookcase and staff donned lab coats to sell cocktail-filled test tubes, before performing the Time Warp en masse at last orders — I learned to pour three pints at once, ensuring that a queue of thirsty punters were served speedily enough to avoid a riot. It was a good laugh. I made lifelong friends and met some fascinating customers.

Bar work even led to my first big break in journalism. Among the regulars at Champagne Charlies, a small, city-centre Edinburgh bar popular with suits, was a group of guys from Scotland’s then highest-selling newspaper, The Daily Record. I was a first-year journalism student who used to practice her shorthand on cigarette breaks.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.