Last Saturday at work was an unusual one.
I work in a fairly classy bar. It has a dress code of sorts, and the drinks are pretty pricey. Our clientele is, largely, the rich and those pretending to be rich. While it’s quiet, the bar is extremely civilised, but when it gets busy, the place turns a little more interesting. Despite the appearance, people can get a little feral there.
What really gets me about hangovers is the way that my thoughts work as I move through the morning after the night before. Normally the important thoughts, like “I need to do some shopping” or “If I don’t eat something, I’ll die” float in and out of my daily random musings, such as “I wonder if sharks will ever learn to walk on their tails” and “I wonder if cats know that humans aren’t cats”, leaving me more or less at the whim of my poor, broken brain as it tumbles around in its chaotic way. On any given day there’s a good chance that I’ll forget to eat for a good few hours, then realise that I’m out of food, and then I’ll fall asleep hungry and tortured by unanswered questions about animals.
One memory from my travels that sticks in my mind is one particular evening when I was in a rather unusual hostel on a backstreet of New York, somewhere around 55th and 8th. I was sat on a couch that looked like it had been saved from extinction by an enterprising tramp and subsequently abandoned once more, only to be picked up by this place and made useable with the addition of a throw-over, which was, as is traditional, bunched up around the corners of the sofa and not covering much of the sitting space at all.
The concept of a hotel in Australia is an interesting thing. I’m not talking about your traditional bed-and-breakfast type situation, although they do of course exist, I’m talking about pubs and clubs with some kind of restaurant function, which are known in Australia as hotels for some reason that I don’t fully understand.
The concept is reasonably basic: have a bar, offer food, satisfy the RSA regulations. Food is considered a good way to combat drunkenness, you see. Given the Aussie diet, this has led to just about every bar pasting up large signs outside offering “The $7 steak! (Conditions apply)” or “The $5 steak! (Conditions apply)” or, sometimes, even “The $9 steak! (No conditions!)”. Most bars then provide an eating area, often to do with their licence.
In Australia, it is illegal to be drunk in a bar.
It’s true. I swear.
Much in the same fashion that anti-smoking measures are creeping in all over the world, anti-alcohol measures are slowly edging into Australia. All employees of any place that serves alcohol are required to take a one day course called Responsible Service of Alcohol, which covers such topics as how to spot drunks and the hefty fines that you may receive if you serve them. To the customer, what this means is drinking in Australia becomes some kind of secret service operation: you can get drunk provided that you don’t look drunk. Staggering, fumbling with change, and slurring your words are all instant tickets out the door. The bar staff become your enemy, all eager to remove you and save their arses from the inevitable police visit. And the police will visit; the bar I work in is sometimes invaded twice a night by uniformed officers, talking to customers, looking for drunks, and sometimes even demanding to see proof that all of the staff have undergone the all-important RSA training.