Drunkard's Tales by Jaroslav Hašek

The more I read Hašek’s Drunkard’s Tales from Old Prague the more I’m convinced that he was pissed when he wrote them (he is recorded as being drunk while writing parts of The Good Soldier Švejk, and it shows in several places...) as it’s getting harder and harder to find stories for the blog that actually make sense from start to finish. That said, his boozy celebration of Czechs living in Vienna during the final years of the Hapsburg Empire is one of the more coherent offerings.

He begins with a quick introduction to Czech society in the imperial capital:

Viennese Czechs divide themselves into two classes, the richer and the poorer one. The poorer ones have their workers’ societies and the richer classes have their Beseda clubs. All of the Czech social life takes place in these Beseda clubs. News keeps coming to us in the Czech lands, how the Czechs in Vienna are oppressed, how 300,000 of the Czech people languish under deprivation, grief, and unhappiness in the cursed bastion over the Danube. Certainly, it would have been a sad for the Czechs if they did not have their Beseda clubs. What would inspire the Czech soul, what could support it in its struggle with the Teutons – the Czech beer in the Czech Beseda clubs! Mainly two beers fortify the gallant Vienna Czechs, two brands that gained an indisputable merit in the Czech cause in Vienna – Třeboň beer and Budějovice beer. These two beers are drunk not as an intoxicating drink, but as a greeting from the old country.

Of course, someone has to pick up the tab, and the Czechs back in Prague hold parade days to fund their compatriots’ exploits away from home. Various floats and carts, sponsored by local shops and companies, are rolled down the street, the procession ending with a tribute to the culture sustaining nectar served in the Beseda clubs:

Then follows an allegorical lorry from the Vinohrady brewery. Eight men in medieval costume sit around a barrel, waving beer mugs and shouting, “Try Vinohrady beer!” They are pretending to be drunk, which they really are. The carriage stops suddenly and the lorry driver straps the best actor to the carriage, so that he would not fall off. This allegorical float is the most popular and is greeted with the most enthusiasm.

After all this, the hat is passed around and everyone gives generously. Thousands of crowns are sent to Vienna to educate and assist their unfortunate Czech brethren. Needless to say, they’re rather popular when they turn up in person:

When a Czech tourist arrives from Prague at such a happy moment to one of the Czech Beseda clubs, it is no wonder that in the atmosphere, warmed up by 10,000 crowns, he is greeted with great affection.

And so he should be!

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

I first encountered the infamous triffid when I was a young boy and the BBC were broadcasting Wyndham’s classic catastrophe novel as a six-parter. I think I lasted all of twenty minutes before the killer plants ambled onto the screen and I fled screaming out of the room. It took a few more years for me to summon up the nerve to pick up the book, and even over two decades later when I come to reread it, the sheer horror of the situation, a world blind and at the mercy of carnivorous plants, still retains its ability to shock and terrify.

Bill Masen wakes up in hospital one morning with the acute sense that something is wrong. His head bandaged and his eyes covered, he has been recovering from a triffid sting (the eponymous plants have long poisonous lashes that they use to kill their prey), when one night a fabulous green light illuminates the sky. Said to be the tail of a comet, everyone in the world goes outside to look at the free fireworks. The next morning, anyone who watched the lights has been rendered totally blind and Masen finds himself in a silent hospital, filled with shuffling patients unable to comprehend what has happened to them.

His sight saved because of the bandages, Masen tries to get out of the hospital as fast as he can. The gravity of the situation quickly becomes apparent: London, Britain, the whole world, in fact, is blind. Masen decides he needs a stiff drink:

But one thing I was perfectly certain about. Reality or nightmare, I needed a drink as I had seldom needed one before. There was nobody in sight in the little side street outside the yard gates, but almost opposite stood a pub. I can recall its name now – ‘The Alamein Arms’. There was a board bearing a reputed likeness of Viscount Montgomery hanging from an iron bracket, and below, one of the doors stood open. I made straight for it. Stepping into the public bar game me for the moment a comforting sense of normality. It was prosaically and familiarly like dozens of others. But although there was no one in that part, there was certainly something going on in the saloon bar, round the corner. I heard heavy breathing. A cork left its bottle with a pop. A pause. Then a voice remarked: “Gin, blast it! T’hell with gin!” There followed a shattering crash.

He finds the landlord, who is blind’s a bat, trying to locate a bottle of Scotch:

I took down a bottle of whisky from the shelf, opened it, and handed it to him with a glass. For myself I chose a stiff brandy with very little soda, and then another. After that my hand wasn’t shaking so much. I looked at my companion. He was taking his whisky neat, out of the bottle. “You’ll get drunk,” I said. He paused and turned his head towards me. I could have sworn that his eyes really saw me. “Get drunk! Damn it, I am drunk,” he said scornfully. He was so perfectly right that I didn’t comment. He brooded a moment before he announced: “Gotta get mush drunker.”

The publican has deduced that it was the comets that did the damage, an opinion reinforced by the fact that Masen didn’t watch them and can still see.

I poured myself a third brandy, wondering whether there might not be something in what he was saying. “Everyone blind?” I repeated. “Thash it. All of ‘em. Prob’ly everyone in th’ world – ‘cept you,” he added, as an after thought. “How do you know?” I asked. “S’easy. Listen!” he said. We stood side by side leaning on the bar of the dingy pub, and listened. There was nothing to be heard – nothing but the rustle of a dirty newspaper blown down the empty street. Such a quietness held everything as cannot have been known in these parts for a thousand years and more.

Masen is now faced with having to survive in a hostile world where only a handful of sighted people remain. The void left by the human race leaves space for the triffids, and Masen is suddenly at the wrong end of the food chain...

Drink Me! How to Choose, Taste and Enjoy Wine by Matt Walls

I discovered this book through Henry’s World of Booze and given that my tastes in wine normally veers nearer to ‘pish’ than ‘posh’, I decided that a easy reading guide to getting more out of your glass was just what I needed and promptly ordered in a copy. What more do you need than a simple crib to which wines will impress the father-in-law, how to tell what a wine tastes like by the name of the grape variety, and which wines work with which foods?

It is, of course, a serious book on enjoying wine, and I’m learning a lot while reading it. That said, Walls has a good turn of phrase and not all the book is dedicated to the more erudite pleasures of oenophily. There are, for instance, occasions when you need to pretend to know more than you actually do. His chapter on ‘Blagging it’ is a good place to start:

At certain times you need to look like you know what you’re doing: at a wine tasting, for example, or if you’re going on a date with someone who’s really into wine. Here are a few things to remember to make you look like a pro.

1. Only fill a wine glass a third of the way up. This gives you room to swirl it around the glass before you take a sip – without getting it all over your companion’s shirt/dress.
2. Swirl the wine around the glass before you take a sip! Don’t just dive in, take a slurp, gulp it down and go ‘aaaah’. First, look at the wine to gauge its colour. Then take a sniff to see what it smells like. Only then take a sip.
3. Pause briefly after you’ve swallowed to make you look like you’re thinking about what you’ve just tasted.
4. Now say one of the following:
- If it’s a recent vintage: “Quite developed for a young wine.”
- If it’s an older bottle: “Lovely aromas coming through.”
- If it’s a red: “Interesting tannins.”
- If it’s a white: “Good minerality.”
- If it’s from the New World (i.e. not Europe): “Clearly New World; lovely, vibrant fruit.”
- If it’s from the Old World (e.g. France, Spain, Italy, Portugal or Germany): “Beautiful Old World character; not too obvious.”
5. Chuck in a few words listed in the glossary and you’re golden.
6. Now change the subject fast – or read the rest of this book.

I can recommend the second option in that last point...