Day 47 - DIY Drinking Overalls

England's predominant approach to Saturday's is to spend a significant time dressing up to look your best with the intention of drinking to the point where you look your worst. Walking through both Leeds and Sheffield I was an outsider looking in, witness to the slow descent of  city centres. I spent the train journey back from Leeds expertly avoiding eye contact with multiple groups of strangers, an onlooker to the intoxication which has meant that everybody's normal state of British passive-aggressive suppression has abandoned them, rendering them compulsive to make friends with everybody by way of incoherent shouting. I'm not saying I'm in the right, I am the miserable misanthrope here. Plus I do get drunk myself, I just happened to not be in this instance. Although even if I was drunk it is unlikely I would have any compulsion to make friends with strangers on a train. Unintentional Hitchcock reference there but it'll do.

Logic would suggest that if your intention was to become significantly drunk, then putting effort into looking your best is the incorrect approach. If you are likely to spend the afternoon spilling drinks over yourself and falling over, the correct course of action would surely be to wear your worst clothes and not bother with jewellery, make-up or anything like that. "Begin as you mean to go on", Spurgeon spurged as he spurged spurge everywhere. I like the idea of train stations on a Saturday morning full of Stag and Hen dos, primarily consisting of oversized shirts covered in paint and old jeans with holes in. But that won't happen because Britain isn't logical enough.

It is interesting to note the immediate noticeable differences in cultures across cities. Both Leeds and Sheffield consisted primarily of drunken people, but Leeds had a more corporate edge. An outwardly professional business-class sheen, but implicitly ITV, loud and chaotic. Mainstream drinking. Sheffield although loud, was a noticeably quieter and less showy affair, more self-assured and not in need of glossy bars to project authenticity. Leeds drinks because it thinks it is important. Sheffield drinks because it knows it is not. I reckon some people in Sheffield do go out day drinking in DIY overalls.