I went into the off-licence earlier, seeking some alcoholic insulation should Barnsley succumb to relegation on the last day of the season tomorrow.
Only once since January have I bothered myself with alcohol – to join in with and comfort my best friend as the news that his work colleague had died was being absorbed.
So I’m far from an expert when it comes to drinking in order to get drunk. I have in the past been wiped out by a bottle of vodka, and whisky brought me to my knees the last time Barnsley fell through the trapdoor. What is it to be today?
My eye glanced across the rows and rows of knock-me-outs, and I knew without further hesitation that I had found my solution. The game where my football club’s fate rests is away to Plymouth, so it could be none other than a bottle of Plymouth gin.
Only if we tumble will I allow myself to touch it. The genie can otherwise remain where it is. It’s not as though I can even go to the game – I have to work, and surreptitiously listen to the radio. I compare it to ending a relationship by text message; indirect, impersonal and far removed from reality, but the outcome is the same.
I remember reading about how Pavlov set up an ingenious experiment with his famous dogs. There’d be a single dog in the first chamber, and its paws would be given small electric shocks depending on where it moved within its compartment.
Eventually, the dog would learn where it was safe to tread and thus avoid the electrified zones. That is to say it had control over its own destiny.
In another chamber, there would be a second dog. Its destiny was out of its hands – or paws. When the first dog stepped on an electrified area, both dogs got a shock. When the first dog moved away to safety, the shocks ceased. The second dog, then, soon learns to behave as a victim. All the second animal could do was hope his compatriot didn’t move, or alternatively yelp in pain when the inevitable happened.
I am the second dog, anxious in my chamber and fearing the worst. At least the gin will staunch the shocks should the worst come to the worst. Otherwise I’m helpless – praying to gods that don’t exist, setting up obsessive-compulsive tasks which, if failed, mean relegation, and wondering if the sight of particular breeds of bird, the arrangement of twigs upon the ground and the slow passing of clouds across the sky are good or bad portents for the day ahead.
