A Different View with Dave O’Connell

By now almost those New Year Resolutions to give up the drink have, like yourself, fallen off the wagon – and with that goes the conundrum of finding an alternative place to pubs to enjoy ourselves.

That said, at least we’ve come a long way from the time when the only alternative to alcohol was a mineral – and even worse sparkling water.

Because nothing prompts more questions than a lad normally seen with a pint of porter in his hand now going around with a bottle of Ballygowan.

These days there’s a whole word of zero-zero and nobody needs to know you’re not imbibing the real deal at all.

It’s not that there’s any embarrassment in abstaining; far from it, it should be a badge of honour. It’s just that you can live without the questions – and drinking something that looks like ‘a real drink’ is best all round.

The other factor in this doesn’t apply to those of us of a certain vintage – but it used to. And that’s the fact that the world looks much better when viewed through beer goggles.

We’re happier, everyone looks better too, and a few pints embolden you to talk to people you wouldn’t approach if you were stone-cold sober.

In other words, to chat up people you might fancy.

Of course even that concept appears alien to today’s Young Turks who don’t seem to deploy the tried or trusted methods of old – as in, physically introducing yourself to someone, asking them to dance and then seeing where the world takes you.

We didn’t have the advantage of the internet of course, although frankly that’s not necessarily an advantage at all. If I’d been waiting for a swipe in the right direction on a phone app, I might still be living the life of a Trappist monk.

There’s a phenomenon called the Silent Disco, which defies all logic in the brain of a person who socialised in the last century.