'More Gin, Vicar?'

Should a priest been seen to drink? Best on the whole, certainly, not to be seen to be drunk. One thinks of poor Canon ‘Bottle’ Topps whose commitment to the sauce was the stuff of legend, before he was needed to be shipped off to the funny-farm friary after mistaking a funeral for a wedding. (‘On this joyous occasion…’ is absolutely not the way to open proceedings when the recently and much mourned departed is but some ten feet in front of one in a perfectly visible coffin.)

Quite why and how dear Bottle’s admiration of a decent sherry before dinner as a seminarian turned into a raging thirst for jarfuls of whisky at all and any times of day or night, one simply does not know; though those who are more familiar than I with Mrs Canon Topps have been seen to tip the occasional nod and wink in that marital direction.

A kindly parish – they are legion – can be a pretty safe place on which to float this particular boat if needs be. ‘Vicar’s a bit poorly today’ will be a discreet local code for ‘The sot’s too pissed to give out the prizes at Speech Day’, or whatever non-liturgical affair he is unable to attend. (A compassionate curate – they are far fewer – willing to step in at a moment’s notice when the Mass itself is at risk of a no-show, is a must-have for the more strictly clerical duties.)

Some parishioners will, indeed, be more empathetic than sympathetic to a drinking priest, happy to have some – as it were – bibendur applied to their own predilection for the booze. That, though, is not an argument one should allow to be fostered; less regarding that particular form of camaraderie than when used as any argument in favour of shepherd being as and at one with his flock.

‘How can a priest understand family life if he has no family himself?’ they foolishly cry. I shall never be a hangman and pray God I shall never be in need of a hanging; yet I must have power and authority to minister to both should either come my way in need of spiritual help and healing. No, the very notion of a man of God having to be also a man of the people is perfect tish and tosh all round, dangerous nonsense indeed.

Taking but this one case – to drink or not to drink – as the question in hand, one simply cannot have the pleasing of everyone. Be a hearty toper and there will be those whose skirts can very nearly be heard the breadth of the county being drawn in, in disgust and dismay both. Be, on the other hand, as dry as a churchyard bone and you’ll lose the majority of folk who don’t much care for any sense that their priest has it in for them for being beerfully cheerful.

Be all that as it may, I am more than content to hold a traditional middle-ground approach to the whole matter. There shall, for example, always be a welcoming bottle of a good malt waiting for anyone who comes calling at the Rectory door, and in the absence of such a guest then the putative host is more than happy to partake of a couple of thick fingers of the stuff himself of a solitary evening.

That, over time, those measuring fingers have grown somewhat fatter is a matter of some record. (H for one has it striped down, which is of consequence as merits no telling.) Has one even grown closer to having to take more the equine route: to begin to consider things by the whole hand not merely the digit per se? That the question may be asked rightly infers that it could be answered in the affirmative. But if so then be so. A man’s a man for all that, one avers.

Teeth-sucking therapists and other interfering busybodies may squeak ‘Fellow’s in denial’ ‘til the stars fall, but I shall not be so falsely accused or perniciously judged. Nothing there but passing fad and fashion as best I can see it, certainly as applying to the clergy.

Of a time the hunting parson was quite the thing; now of course as much inhibited by secular disapprobation as by lawful prohibition. That same fellow, having counted the hounds out and counted them back in again, would later be found merrily pulling on his corn-cob pipe - stuffed with smuggled baccy - and washed down with a mug of hot brandy, itself similarly perfectly lacking any regulatory paperwork from the dread Revenue and/or Customs.

One must be careful not to overstep the bounds of required clerical decorum here, but one also must be excused to some forgiving degree that living, as one now is, by the riverside in a house where once smugglers dwelt and carried on their knavish trade, one is far more at present pro- not anti- the whole Kipling ‘waking at midnight to the sound of passing horses with no desire to enquire further as to illicit purpose’ thing. Indeed one could not help but admire - at a safe distance admittedly – the legend on the t-shirt of the fellow at the bar yester evening: ‘I hate people who take drugs – police and customs officers’. Naughty but nice one will permit oneself to say.

This then the libertarian mood of the moment, it somewhat heavily jarred with the horrid ‘nanny state’ mentality prevailing down at the local slaughter-house, aka a thoroughly modern and deadly dangerous NHS hospital. Having only popped in as per for some routine reassurance from one’s ever-delightful oncologist, one was perhaps off one’s guard when waylaid by a beaming nurse with a clipboard. (On reflection, that should have been the clue: a bedpan, a thermometer or a cabinet stuffed with healing medicines are proper accessories for a nurse, not a manager’s badge of shame.)

‘We’re just doing a little survey Rector, could you spare a moment or two?’ ‘Little survey’ – ha indeed! More pointless ‘customer feedback’ and useless ‘raw data’ to feed the ever-gaping maw of central command and control. One could at once spot this of course, but ‘tis one of the perils of the clerical classes that we are not permitted – as any other are – to be seen to snub any beaming young nurse.

‘We just want to ask people about their drinking habits.’ Foolish parson should have bolted like any mare when affrighted by its own shadow, not dived on in like some over-confident contestant on ‘Mastermind’ – how one misses dear Magnus – invited to expound on his specialist subject.

First question was a blinder, in the sense that one was totally bemused and baffled by it. ‘How many units of alcohol do you drink in a week?’ Well what, precisely, is a ‘unit of alcohol’ one could only in truth respond. A pint, a glass – a bottle even – a ‘say when’, a ‘make that a large one if you would George’ are all perfectly familiar measures for drinks; but no, a ‘unit’ has no meaning in the lexicon of life as lived. A slight dimming of the young chit’s beam at that I fear, as she herself feared she didn’t actually know and had hoped that I would. (Clearly some work then yet to be done on the pre-survey briefing phase of the whole operation.)

From not terribly good to awfully rather poor I fear the session went. That the entire information exchange was just that – a list of preset questions from which there could be no deviation, nor to which could there be anything supplementary added – perfectly ill-fitted the subject to hand. If one is going to open up on such sensitive and revealing matters such as mornings one could not quite recall the night before, or mornings when one has – one hasn’t – reached for more drink, or unexplained personal injuries, or – the killer – regrets for actions taken under the influence; if then all that deep stuff is up for debate, it is only right and proper that one is not utterly restricted and constrained in answering to ‘Never’ or ‘Sometimes’ or ‘Frequently’.

‘Well, there was that time I nicked Papa’s car as a junior and bashed it into the Colonel’s front wall. Caused quite a stink I can tell you.’ Such nostalgic confessing of youthful indiscretions cannot be done any justice this short, sharp way. Reverting to the ‘Mastermind’ analogy: to be started is not then at once to be stopped dead in one’s tracks. Or rather it shouldn’t be, though it was regretfully.

A certain temptation began to grow to be subversive. ‘But does not everyone consume seven bottles of whiskey between sunrise and the setting of the same?’ Or better still, ‘I’ve killed before you know.’ (That last a splendid tip from a delightful visiting Mexican priest many years back: ‘If ever you are stuck with a complete bore at a party, just drop in to the conversation that you have a history of homicide and you’ll at once be set free.’ And who said liberation theology is complete pants eh?) Tempted, but not succumbing.

Less in truth out of consideration for the dignity of the nursing profession, more a creeping unease about the future safeguarding of one’s answers; wafty reassurances that ‘all data will be treated in strict confidence’ cutting not a stem of mustard plant at this point.

My entire stance on this matter is that no sooner is any piece of info or gen entered into a computer, than it at once becomes completely available to the entire wide world of web. Whether by malice, by design or by simple human mishap, once in it will eventually out is my unswervable view. This just in general; regarding the NHS in particular, one knows that it has no more capacity to maintain confidentiality within than a sieve to bail a boat without.

The outcome was as unsatisfactory as the process or the content. ‘You’ve scored 14, Rector. Two more and I would have had to refer you to a specialist physician in the sphere of substance abuse,’ were Nanny Nursey’s concluding remarks. Refer all you like I’ll be making my own choices in the matter was my silent riposte, tempered in part by the, equally unspoken, reflection that one had categorically downplayed some aspects of some of the answers as given. The odd ‘Frequently’ metamorphosing into the ‘Sometimes’, or the ‘Who hasn’t?’ emerging as the ‘What me?’ That sort of thing.

All in all a tricky, awkward and an upsetting occasion sufficient to drive any clergyman to further drink. More gin anyone?