Greenwich Beer Time

I measure the passing of man's greatest treasure and asset, friend or foe, namely time, not by the hands of a precision chronometer, the passing overhead of the sun, sand in an hourglass or the days taken for the wife to forgive me, but normally by the amount of empty beer bottles arrayed in front of me. Let me explain…..

A typical scenario would go something like this:
Beer Police (wife): What time did you get in last night / this morning?!?
Abject Wretch (me): I only had three beers darling and…..
BP: Lies! Lies! Lies! Who were you with?
AW: I had a beer or two with ( X insert name here, the first and most trustworthy if there is such a person in Pattaya, that you can think of ). One has to develop lightning fast reflexes to this line of questioning, taking into account A) Does she know X's wife or latest girlfriend, and B) Are they likely to meet up in the near future? A suitable response is to use a 'mate' who is a renowned butterfly, so anyone of the feminine gender seen within a hectare radius of you can be aaahed away dismissively as X's latest fling. A 'good' friend will return the compliment, mark my words. (And guard your genitals)

A news reader on the German Deutsche-Welle channel seemed most concerned recently to announce that the German economy was foreseen to be heading into recession due to the fact that the average beer consumption per consumer was down 3 ltrs per year from the record high of 127 ltrs/annum set the previous year. Goodness me, what were those dastardly Huns doing with all that extra time and sobriety on their hands? There is a terrible, 4 lettered word that springs to mind if a person is not engaged in that most admirable task of quaffing beer. That heinous word is WORK! But never despair when beer is near, she overrides all commercial matters with sayings like 'Let's have a pub lunch' or 'Let's slip away for a few quick ones, they will never smell it on us!'

Why did the 100 year war take so long to end? Fight.. Fight.. Beer break…Fight… Fight… Beer break. Einstein's theories were formulated on a sodden beer coaster as he contemplated the amount of time it took for his favourite beverage to arrive. Newton's Laws on gravity were similarly formulated by being hit over the head by an irate bar wench when he got too plastered on ale and gravity took hold of his other brain. An apple was a very plausible excuse to Mrs. Newton. Caesar's famous 'Et Tu Brutus', came after noticing his beer had been emptied while he took a Latin leak.

Minutes, according to Bacchus' first law of imbibing, can be exponentially lengthened to hours or even days by the simple utterance… 'Darling, I'm just popping out for a quick beer, wont be long!' This statement merits to stand in the illustrious company of 'One small step (sideways) for man' or Churchill's beer addled 'Men will say, this was their finest (happy) hour!' Foreign taxi drivers, unable to understand your incoherent ramblings will therefore drive you in ever widening circles until you have left the city, the state or maybe even the planet.

There is however one surefire method of regulating time, MONEY. Go out on a budget and the mathematics become pretty simple. A beer at a bar should use up around 30 minutes if you're lucky, so therefore I can visit

B =	C. O. H

	T. T. D

Where C. O. H = Cash On Hand
T. T. D = Time To Drink

With unlimited financial resources, the equation alters drastically to B = C. R. A. F. T (Can't Remember A Friggin' Thing ) The worst aspect of the beer/time relationship is when time starts to go backwards and you amazingly find yourself propped up at your favourite watering hole earlier and earlier each day.

What the hell, It's time for a beer!