Chomping and slurping

Since when did it become normal for people to eat and drink in theatres and cinemas with absolutely no consider-ation for those around them who're trying to concentrate on the film or play?

When I was younger people might eat the odd packet of popcorn or chocolate bar or have the odd drink, but they did it as discreetly as possible and without disturbing their neighbours.

Now it's seen as normal by some to chomp and slurp and rustle as noisily and blatantly as they like, sometimes so conspicuously that the play or film has to be halted and the offending individuals told to be quiet or leave.

And often when someone asks the people concerned to keep the noise down, they're met with a torrent of abuse and anger and told to mind their own business, as if the person complaining is the guilty party.

There are also the chatterers - those people who just chatter to each other continuously, and you wonder why on earth they paid good money to be there when they must be missing so much of what's going on.

Quite often heavy drinking seems to be involved, with the resulting indifference to other people's annoyance. And again, if you're drunk you'll be missing half of what's going on, so why not stay sober?

I can only sympathise with the actors trying to deliver a major speech to an audience that finds stuffing their mouths more important than what's happening on stage.

Just a splash

My taste for alcohol has always been limited. I enjoy a glass of wine, possibly two, but that's more than enough. I've never understood those vast hordes of people who like to drink as much as possible.

I watch them reeling out of pubs and then collapsing or vomiting or shrieking obscenities and I wonder for the umpteenth time what the attraction is. Especially when the next day they'll also have a crushing hangover and be struggling to function normally.

As a twenty something, I fell in with a crowd of heavy drinkers and started to drink as relentlessly as they did. But after several appalling hangovers, when I felt at death's door and ready to top myself just to end the misery, I resolved to be more sensible and limit myself to what my body could cope with rather than beating my liver to a pulp.

Of course heavy drinking is so common that the drinkers seldom see anything wrong with it. They think heavy drinking is completely normal, if anything more normal than a strait-laced, priggish refusal to keep gulping it down. I know what they're thinking - I'm a wimp, a girlie, an abstemious nerd who doesn't know how to let my hair down and have a good time. Well, each to their own, I guess, and all I can say is that their meat is my poison.

Heavy drinkers have no trouble justifying their habit. What could be more natural? They just enjoy drinking to excess. They enjoy being drunk. They need it to drown their sorrows, to escape the agonies of daily life. It loosens their inhibitions, relaxes them. It helps them to socialise. It's sexually liberating. So many good reasons for knocking it back.

I suppose my attitude is that I want to experience life as it is. If life is difficult, then I'll find ways of making it easier. I'm not looking for an escape, a way of blotting out reality so I don't have to deal with it any more. If I'm shy or nervous, I don't want some artificial Dutch courage to feign a confidence I don't have. I'd rather admit to my shyness and overcome it in my own way.

Whenever someone says "Go on, have another. It won't kill you" I just think, "But what's the point?"