ice, ice baby.
I’m gonna start this story a few years ago. Sorry if it seems to be misleading but it all comes together like a jigsaw toward the end.
It was the Summer of 1998. I was 16 and my social life was just about hitting it’s prime. It was the middle of the France ‘98 football world cup and England were amongst the favourites to win (oh how things change!). On the night of the highly anticipated England vs Holland game my friends and i decided to have a break from hanging around near the swings and decided to stay in at my mate Dax’s back room and watch the game….with some alcohol!!
Now, although most of us were partial to the occasional can of lager, we had not yet experienced a boy’s night in and a piss up, so this really was a big deal for us. It was almost the ‘coming of age’, sophistication at last!
Upon realising i was actually 16 with the face of a 12 year old i started to fret about where my supplies would be coming from…so I asked my Mum. Although most of you have just slapped your heads in pity, my Mum was pretty cool about it. Her point being ‘if I get you some, at least I know where it came from and at least i know exactly what your drinking’. Fucking makes sense in a crazy way, doesn’t it. So she took me to “happy shopper” and got me a 3 litre bottle of Frosty Jacks cider. I could almost feel my adam’s apple developing as i turned up at Dax’s with MY ALCOHOL!
As it turned out i was quite keen on the sweet taste of the cider…maybe a little too keen. The whole 3 litres had gone in the first 45 minutes of the game, followed closely by my ability to stand and then the contents of my stomach. The mature feeling I had when I arrived with my beverage was well and truly shattered as i spent the next 4 hours being violently sick a corner of the back garden as my mate’s mum rubbed my back and repeated the dangers of binge drinking. Now i’m no Gordon Ramsay but i can tell you from this that second hand cider mixed with bile does not in any way compliment the lining of your stomach as it all gushes from your mouth and nose (remember fans, the size of my nostrils). Now this did not put me off alcohol at all, God no! But it did give me the deepest hatred for cider. The faintest whiff would turn my stomach and i could almost feel the burning in my throat. That is how i came to detest cider…..
Present day:
As you may or may not know i have a 1 year old son, with a set bedtime etc so, with limited babysitter options, Louise (my woman) and I don’t get out much. We do, however, make the most of the boy’s bed time by spending time together just watching a film and, more often than not, having a few beers or a bottle of wine. On St Patricks day of this year we decided to have our very own 2 person “Irish Night”.(Ha Ha, look at you all sitting forward in excitement of what this involved) Basically we got some guiness and some Irish cider and thought we’d watch the Irish Bands special on the music channel.
Now i was against the cider part but as Lou pointed out, everybody’s drinking it these days so it can’t be THAT bad. You see hoards of lads drinking pints of it with ice and it does look refreshing. I couldn’t argue with that so we did, indeed, buy some well known brand of Irish cider (which was actually bloody expensive). Maybe my tastes were about to change.
I filled my pint glass up to the brim with ice cubes, filled it with the cider and noted how it did look quite nice and appetising. So i took a swig…..
I was aware the bottle described it as ‘tangy’ but the face i pulled can only resemble a chinese guy with down’s syndrome. I could have stuck my head in a tyre and won the fucking world gurning contest. It was fucking tart! It was the exact same shit that had given my tonsils first degree burns all them years ago. WANK! Neither me or Lou drank any more of the evil in a bottle.
So then, i asked myself, what was the big craze of cider. Sales of the stuff have actually increased by 29% in the last year to £453 MILLION POUNDS!!!! and it was the same stuff that cost my dear old Mum £1.25 for 3 litres. Then i realised where the money lay….ice!
If you show a group of hoodie clad youths on a park, with their tracksuit bottoms tucked into their socks to show off their Rockport boots all sharing a plastic bottle of cider (which is exactly what you will find on every playground post 9pm) then you would not drink cider. However, put it in a pint glass with ice, as the bubbles explode to the surface and moisture drips down the glass, and the money looking guy with the shirt sleeves rolled up to the cuffs to expose his rolex sips it and shakes his head in satisfaction, and you have sold it!
Basically, a few ice cubes on a commercial have made the cider industry an annual profit of 322 million pounds. Now that, people, is genius! I bet the fucking eskimos are kicking themselves. Ice. Frozen water. Thats all it took. Brilliant!
Now i know everyone has their own taste, drink what you want be it cider, cask ale, or even babycham (i’m from Blackpool, remember) but i’m afraid to say that even a few ice cubes and the enjoyment of a metrosexual guy could not pull me back into the enjoyment of what is, basically, mouldy garden fruit with a hint of birds shit. Sorry
til next time peeps
H.
P.S, why do they put adverts for oxy face wash on, involving kids squeezing acne onto a mirror, on T.V just as you sit down to eat your tea? I won’t be having korma again for a while. BASTARDS!!
