Getting Even edited by Mitzi Szereto

Described as the book for anyone who has ever been betrayed, Szereto has gathered together a range of new and established authors in a glorious celebration of revenge, proving that it’s not only unfaithful husbands who should beware. The stories in Getting Even avoid easy categorisation, including psychotic dolls and murder by cakes and kindness, along with the more usual jilted spouses, and alcohol certainly plays its part in some of the stories. However, it’s the particularly ingenious method of removing an abusive husband using drink in Tony Fennelly’s How To Kill An Aries that prompted me to pop it into a post.


Fiery, pig headed bigot Ronald treats his wife Myra like a slave while he drinks his life away. Although he’s successful at work, Myra effectively does everything for him:

When he filled out our tax forms, in the blank labelled ‘Spouse’s Occupation’, my husband always identified me as a ‘housewife’. But what I really was is what rehabilitative counsellors call a ‘co-alcoholic’. That is, a faithful helpmeet who enables her partner to spend all his leisure time drinking, without care or interruption.

She reminisces about when they met; how he wowed her when she was aged seventeen when he rode up on his fast red motorbike. Thirty three years later, his good looks have gone, the once-handsome face was bloated after decades of heavy drinking, and Myra is truly sick to the back teeth with him. Unable to leave without being cut off without a cent, she looks to the stars and realises that his sign, Aries, is just about to come up.

Myra begs some money from her sister in California, then goes out to buy Ronald a surprise present to celebrate their anniversary. First things first, though; she has to feed him his supper and get his beer when he comes home from work:

I served him small portions of the food but kept the beers coming.

Once his tanked up with booze, she takes him to the garage to show him his special gift. It’s a motorbike. A red one. Faster and more powerful than the one that he had when they met. Sadly, there isn’t a helmet to go with it, although Ronald isn’t bothered. Myra tells him not to take it out for a spin, but it’s a red rag to a bull, or Aries:

“And most important, you can’t go out riding after you’ve been drinking.” “Don’t try to tell me what I can’t do. I ride better when I’m drinking because I’m more careful.”

Needless to say, the inevitable happens and Myra reaches the nirvana of widowhood. And Ronald? Well his heart goes on to save someone’s life, but as Myra remarks to herself, I shouldn’t think the good doctors would like the liver much.

The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell

Farrell’s British Empire satire isn’t exactly subtle, but the Siege of Krishnapur is still a brilliant book. Humorous as well as chilling, it follows the fortunes of the besieged community in the fictional town of Krisnapur during the Indian Mutiny of 1857.


In the calm before the storm, George Fleury arrives at Calcutta. Quickly travelling to Krishnapur, he has a brief moment to savour the whimsical, sheltered existence that the British possess in India. Naturally, there’s plenty to drink, and when Fleury pays a visit to a house near the residency, it’s obvious that the other guests have been at it all afternoon. The host, Rayne, slurs his way through the introductions:

“We have Ford and his ilk but I’m hanged if the railway will ever reach Krishnapur,” jeered Rayne, who was evidently somewhat drunk. “Where’s that damned bearer. Ram, bring the Sahib a drink... Simkin! That means champagne, old man. We don’t drink tea in this house.”

The peace and quiet is disturbed the arrival of Lieutenant Cutter, who rides his horse Beeswing into the house and vaults the sofa, demanding a drink:

“No thanks, Rayne, you can keep your Calcutta champagne. I only drink Todd and James, my horse drinks that rubbish. Monkey, bring brandy pawnee!” But Monkey was evidently familiar with Lieutenant Cutter’s tastes for he was already hastening forward with a tray.

Of course, his horse must be watered as well:

“Does Beeswing really drink simkin?” Mrs Rayne wanted to know, for it seemed that Cutter had given his horse the name of the celebrated Calcutta mare. At this, Cutter, who had sunk despondently on to the feather-strewn sofa with his boots and spurs dangling over the end, started up again with a roar and nothing would do but that Beeswing, who all this time had been standing patiently by the window and occasionally dropping his head to try and crop the Persian rug on which he was standing, should join the party too and drink his fill. Ram hurried in with another bottle and a bowl, but Cutter ignored the bowl and seized a solar topee from a side table; into this he splashed the contents of the bottle, guffawing and shouting encouragement to his horse.

All jolly japes, but as the Sahibs drink themselves silly on fizz, the locals are getting restless...

Last Orders by Graham Swift

A moving study of ordinary life, Last Orders follows four men undertaking the final wishes of Jack Dodds, erstwhile soldier, butcher and friend, as they take his ashes from Bermondsey to be scattered into the sea at Margate.

Principally narrated by gambling man Ray, the action of the book takes place in one day, as the men drive through Kent to Jack’s last resting place. Ray gets one in early at the local pub:

Bernie pulls me a pint and puts it in front of me. He looks at me, puzzled, with his loose, doggy face but can tell I don’t want no chit-chat. That’s why I’m here, five minutes after opening, for a silent pow-wow with a pint glass... I suck an inch off my pint and light up a snout. There’s maybe three or four other early-birds apart from me, and the place don’t look its best. Chilly, a whiff of disinfectant, too much empty space. There’s a shaft of sunlight coming through the windows, full of specks. Makes you think of a church. I sit there, watching the old clock, up behind the bar. Thos. Slattery, Clockmaker, Southwark. The bottles racked up like organ pipes.

They stop for lunch at Rochester and the temptation to stay the afternoon in the boozer is all too strong:

Then we eat up and drink up and Lenny and I light up ciggies and Lenny gets in a round and it seems like we’ve always know the Bull in Rochester and it’s always known us, and we’re all thinking the same thing, that it’s a pity we can’t just carry on sitting here getting slowly pickled and at peace with the world, it’s a pity we’re obliged to take Jack on to Margate. Because Jack wouldn’t have minded, it’s even what he would’ve wanted for us, to get sweetly slewed on his account.

They resist and the odyssey to Margate continues. But not before a Ray imparts a little home truth to himself while using the lavatory.

There’s always a frosted quarter-light, chinked open, with a view of the back end of somewhere, innyards, alleyways, with some little peephole out on life... It’s when you stand up to piss you can tell how pissed you are.

He’s not wrong there. He might also have pointed out the sad fact that nobody ever buys beer, they merely rent it...

Who on Earth is Tom Baker by Tom Baker

Gloriously written, Baker’s autobiography doesn’t just cover his acting career, most famously as The Doctor, but his upbringing in Liverpool, his time as a novice monk and the incident when he tried to kill his mother-in-law by throwing a hoe at her...


The title comes from a hellish taxi ride, when the cabbie mistook him for Jon Pertwee and went on at length to slag off Tom Baker:

“What a piss artist he was, do you know he was always drunk, used to throw up all over the place. What happened to him then, Mr. Pertwee, I never see him on the box these days?”

Trying to elicit a scrap of sympathy, Baker tells the driver that the man whose reputation he is traducing has in fact passed on to his eternal reward:

“Didn’t you hear?” I said, perched only on my coccyx as I leaned forward to catch a crumb of kindness. “Didn’t you hear, he died in a basement flat in Clapham, not a pot to piss in.” And I added, to guarantee some humane response: “He’s buried over that way at Saint Michael and All the Holy Angels, Elm Road.” This invention of a parish and a road I thought was a stroke of eloquence. No Answer. And then from Charon, “What a tosspot.” Distraught for a kind obituary from him, I added, from God knows what wastepaper basket of my mind, “If you go to the grave, you can actually smell the fumes of Carlsberg Special.” And in despair, I gilded it with, “Sometimes, you can see some skint old alkie lying on the grave having a sniff.”

Baker also covers the years that he spent hanging around with the Soho Crowd. Francis Bacon, Dan Farson et al get mentions, as does Jeff Barnard, who really was ‘unwell’, from time to time:

Once when I went to see him in the Middlesex Hospital, I was shocked and frightened to see how weak he looked. He was suffering from an attack of pancreatitis, I think. It must have been an agonizing ailment to have reduced Jeff so quickly. There was a youngish doctor there who wondered if perhaps Jeff could knock off the vodka. Bravely, Jeff shook his head and the doctor sighed in admiration. “Perhaps you could cut down on it, Jeff?” he suggested. But Jeff was not to be dissuaded, “I’ve been with Sally Smirnoff too long to leave her now.”

His chapter on his antics in Soho does beg the question: why all the time in bars, clubs and pubs?

And we went on laughing and doing anything to avoid going home to those who loved us. It is a common anxiety among drinkers that they find it hard to go home. We don’t like to leave each other.

And in sad old way, he’s right...

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

Having covered it in pastiche (q.v.) I thought it about time that I tackled the real thing. The book that launched Irvine Welsh’s career, Trainspotting was subsequently picked up by filmmaker Danny Boyle who turned it into the must-see film of 1996. I ought to know; I was a student at the time and saw it in the cinema. Twice.


While the book mainly focuses on a cast of drug users from Edinburgh, its style is of a collection of vignettes with a motley collection of chancers, drunks, losers and nutters flitting in and out of the loosely connected stories. One of the most memorable of these is Francis ‘Franco’ Begbie; an alcoholic sociopath, prone to exploding into mindless violence at any given moment:

The probem wi Begbie wis... well, thirs that many problems wi Begbie. One ay the things thit concerned us maist wis the fact thit ye couldnae relax in his company, especially if he’d hud a bevvy.

Mark Renton, one of the principal narrators in the book, is out on the town for someone’s 21st and Begbie is tagging along. He’s obviously started already:

The Beggar had been bevvying up before we met him. He looked seedy and menacing done up in a suit, the way draftpaks do, indian ink spilling oot from under cuffs and collar onto neck and hands.

It’s a night out that promises to be a heavy one. Begbie is mouthing off and itching for a fight. Spotting a bunch of heavies coming into the bar, he’s plotting trouble while Renton goes downstairs to get the next round in:

Ah take the drinks back, the nips first fir the women, then the pints. Then it happens. Aw ah did was put a pint ay Export in front ay Begbie. He takes one fuckin gulp oot ay it; then he throws the empty glass fae his last pint straight ower the balcony, in a casual, backhand motion. It’s one ay they chunky, panelled glasses wi a handle, n ah kin see it spinnin through the air oot the corner ay ma eye.

The glass splits someone’s head open. Begbie’s downstairs demanding to know who did it. Within minutes, all hell has broken loose:

One fat cunt fae the group ay psychos goes up tae this other group ay guys at the bar n sticks the heid oan one ay them. The place goes up. Lassies scream, guys issue threats, push each other and exchange blows as the sound ay brekin gless fills the air.

Or as Welsh would have it, a normal night out in Edinburgh...

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

Philosophical novel and cult sixties read, Steppenwolf is about the dichotomy of Harry Haller, a man both lone wolf of the steppes and sophisticated mystic, a ‘suicide’ unable to join the two halves of his personality.

Hesse complained that his book had been violently misunderstood, which was almost certainly a pop at the counterculture’s enthusiasm for the drug taking and frank sexuality in the latter half of the novel to the detriment of its more subtle nuances. At risk of being accused of a misunderstanding myself, here’s a quick dash through some of its boozy references.

Steppenwolf takes the form of a set of notes by Haller, containing A Treatise on the Steppenwolf, a pamphlet he is given in the street, and a preface by the nephew of the lady renting a room to Haller. The nephew, a rather serious young man, takes a liking to Haller, despite his rather dissolute behaviour. A furtive prowl around Haller’s room while he’s out confirms the nephew’s suspicions that he’s a lush:

On the big table among the books and papers there was often a vase of flowers. There, too, a paint box, generally full of dust, reposed among flakes of cigar ash and (to leaving nothing out) sundry bottles of wine. There was a straw-covered bottle usually containing Italian red wine, which he procured from a little shop in the neighbourhood; often, too, a bottle of Burgundy as well as Malaga; and a squat bottle of Cherry brandy was, as I saw, nearly emptied in a very brief space – after which it disappeared in a corner of the room, there to collect the dust without further diminution of its contents.

He follows him into a tavern one night and sits with him, an experience that does nothing to change his mind:

We sat there for an hour, and while I drank two glasses of mineral water, he accounted for a pint of red wine and then called for another half.

Mind you, Haller’s own accounts of his nights spent down the pub relate some steady imbibing:

None the less, the quiet of the place was worth something; no crowds, no music; only a few peaceful townsfolk at bare wooden tables (no marble, no enamel, no plush, no brass) and before each his evening glass of good old wine. Perhaps this company of habitués, all of whom I know by sight, were all regular Philistines and had in the Philistine dwellings their dreary altars of the home dedicated to sheepish idols of contentment; perhaps, too, they were solitary fellows who had been sidetracked, quiet, thoughtful topers of bankrupt ideals, lone wolves and poor devils like me... Here I cast anchor, for an hour, or it might be two. With the first sip of Elsasser I realized that I had eaten nothing that day since breakfast.

Wine by the pint cannot be a good idea, especially on an empty stomach. Could this be the real provenance of the illuminated letters on the wall advertising the Magic Theatre. Entrance not for Everybody. For Madmen Only...

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

I’ve spent the last week reading Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm and although it’s not a drinker’s novel by a long chalk, I’ve found one reference so far that I felt would do nicely for the blog.

Flora Poste, expensively, athletically and lengthily educated, descends on her extended family at their farm in Sussex and sets to bringing order into their chaotic and bizarre lives. Out one evening with cousin Amos, who preaches hellfire sermons at the Church of the Quivering Brethren, Flora escapes the chapel and hides in a tearoom opposite. Unfortunately, she runs into another refugee from London, Mybug, a thundering crashing bore of a man.

Mybug is writing a book about the Brontës. Apparently, the three sisters didn’t write any of the novels for which they were famed, but passed off the work of their brother Branwell as their own:

“You see, it’s obvious that it’s his book and not Emily’s. No woman could have written that. It’s male stuff... I’ve worked out a theory about his drunkenness, too – you see, he wasn’t really a drunkard. He was a tremendous genius, a sort of second Chatterton – and his sisters hated him because of his genius.”

Flora is forced to sit through even more of this piffle as Mybug warms to his theme:

“They wanted to have him under their noses so that they could steal his work and sell it to buy more drink... They were all drunkards, but Anne was the worst of the lot. Branwell, who adored her, used to pretend to get drunk at the Black Bull in order to get gin for Anne. The landlord wouldn’t let him have it if Branwell hadn’t built up – with what devotion, God only knows – that false reputation as a brilliant, reckless, idle drunkard.”

Well, it’s a theory, I suppose...

Tales of the Unexpected by Roald Dahl

I have a prickly relationship with Dahl. Once a childhood favourite (I devoured Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach et al back in the day) I found myself reappraising him unfavourably in later years, particularly after reading his Uncle Oswald stories, which I thought repellent. While mulling over titles for the blog, I recalled that one of his Tales of the Unexpected centres on a bottle of wine, so I decided to give him another go.

Opening story Taste sees wealthy stock-broker Mike Schofield inviting professional gourmet Richard Pratt to a swanky dinner party where the host does his best to impress his guests with fine wine and choice cuts of meat. Pratt has been a couple of times before and has used his expertise to win a couple of cases of claret off Schofield by being able to give the name and vintage of the wine without seeing the label on the bottle. Schofield, convinced that he has found a claret so obscure that Pratt won’t ever be able to guess the vineyard where it comes from, foolishly allows himself to bet the hand of his daughter in marriage if his guest gives him the correct name.

From the off, it’s clear that Pratt is a ghastly human being:

...when discussing wine, he had a curious, rather droll habit of referring to it as though it were a living being. ‘A prudent wine,’ he would say, ‘rather diffident and evasive, but quite prudent.’ Or, ‘A good-humoured wine, benevolent and cheerful – slightly obscene, perhaps, but none the less good-humoured.’

Schofield has produced a fine Moselle to start the meal, and gives a long explanation as to why this is the perfect aperitif to claret. Pratt isn’t listening; he’s too busy eyeing up his host’s daughter, but when the time comes to clear the plates away, he turns his attention to his entrée:

...he reached for his glass, and in two short swallows he tipped the wine down his throat and turned immediately to resume conversation with Louise Schofield.

Put out, but not put off, Schofield goes on to produce the wine of the evening, and makes his rather extravagant wager, much to the horror of his daughter and his wife. Pratt makes a real song and dance about the tasting, a process that lasts for several pages:

Slowly he lifted the glass to his nose. The point of the nose entered the glass and moved over the surface of the wine, delicately sniffing. He swirled the wine gently around in the glass to receive the bouquet... For at least a minute, the smelling process continued; then, without opening his eyes or moving his head, Pratt lowered the glass to his mouth and tipped in almost half the contents. He paused, his mouth full of wine, getting the first taste; then, he permitted some of it to trickle down his throat and I saw his Adam’s apple move as it passed by. But most of it he retained in his mouth. And now, without swallowing again, he drew in through his lips a thin breath of air which mingled with the fumes of the wine in the mouth and passed on down into his lungs. He held the breath, blew it out through the nose, and finally began to roll the wine around under the tongue, and chewed it, actually chewed it with his teeth as though it were bread. It was a solemn, impassive performance, and I must say he did it well. ‘Um,’ he said, putting down the glass, running a pink tongue over his lips. ‘Um – yes. A very interesting little wine – gentle and gracious, almost feminine in the aftertaste.’

He has Schofield’s full attention after this little piece of am-dram. Then he starts homing in on the vintners:

‘There it is again,’ he cried. ‘Tannin in the middle taste, and the quick astringent squeeze upon the tongue. Yes, yes, of course! Now I have it! The wine comes from one of those small vineyards around Beychevelle...’

Of course, in the end he guesses correctly! Surely he hasn’t done something dastardly like cheat? Now that would be unexpected...