Road to Utopia

 Pretty Poison(s)

Years ago I saw a film called Pretty Poison starring Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld.  It was released in 1968 so maybe I saw it round about then....  It has stuck in my mind, partly because Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates: Psycho) was most effective as the disturbed young man (Dennis Pitt), and partly because I clearly remember the scene where they sabotage a factory which was pouring coloured effluents into a river.  

In my mind that was what the film was about - industrial pollution - and I can still see those pipes of bright fluids spouting into the river water. But now I look it up I find that it's actually about alienated youth, not unlike Terence Malick's wonderful Badlands (1973).

But the title still resonates.  And it tinkles like ice in a glass every time I fix a drink..... which is perhaps why there is the resonance?

A dry martini on a roof terrace overlooking Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome at sunset.....

A gin and tonic in my new home in Norfolk......

A glass of pink wine on a hotel terrace in rural Lazio....

Or a beer and an Arehucas chaser of an evening in the Canaries.....

Yes folks, this is the Road to Utopia.....

Wherever I go I am attracted by the phrase, What's your poison?  Even if it's a rhetorical question, or one whispered by a six foot rabbit (called Harvey) in my ear.....  

And strangely, perhaps, these attractions all have one ingredient in common, which is CH3CH2OH or C2H6O, or ethanol, which, according to my interweb,  has a role as an antiseptic drug, a polar solvent, a neurotoxin, a central nervous system depressant, a teratogenic agent, a NMDA receptor antagonist, a protein kinase C agonist, a disinfectant, a human metabolite, a Saccharomyces cerevisiae metabolite, an Escherichia coli metabolite and a mouse metabolite. It is a primary alcohol, an alkyl alcohol, a volatile organic compound and a member of ethanols. It is a conjugate acid of an ethoxide.....

So gimme a lemonade.....  In a dirty glass.....

I blame my mum and dad....

Or, rather, I thank my mum and dad.  For just about everything.  They never made me drink, but dad's occasional bottle of Tolly Cobbold on the Sunday lunch table, with its enticing neck label of a scantily clad lady, may have influenced me.

Or perhaps it was living in Europe?

That undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveler returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

I know it's bad for me.  

But let us be honest, the one thing that leads to death is life.

O for a beaker full of the warm South, 

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, 

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, 

And purple-stained mouth; 

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 

And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

 

I find great solace in these pretty poisons.  For me a pleasant evening pastime is to sit with a glass and a book.  A pleasure that is redoubled with two glasses; in this case, one of white wine and one with a peach steeped in red wine.  

Aaahh.....

I do not wish to make light of suffering or illness.  Moderation is almost certainly a good thing, and I am not convinced by Blake's Hellish Proverb that: The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom... Though there is sense in his rider that, You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.

On August 26th this year my friend Truman would have been 109, had his long lease of life not run out a little while ago.  In celebration of his contribution to our collective happiness, friends and family will raise a glass to his memory on that day.  Unfortunately, with Covid and other complications, not everyone can make the trip to Trevignano, but glasses will be raised.  

Just as he raised a good many himself.  Pretty much to his dying day he enjoyed a tumbler of Jack Daniels Number 7, with ice and water, in the evening.

As the song goes:

Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, 

If the women don't get you, the liquor must....

But if you make it to 108 past a few empty bottles of these pretty poisons then there must be worse things?

But back to the film.  Alienated youth is one thing.  Industrial pollution is another.  Neither are good. Both are major headaches.....

Just thinking about it makes me want a drink.....

Cheers....!