Dear Al,
You are having a hard time, and with some former friends taking up the cudgels. Nothing compares to the zeal of former friends turned enemy. It is why civil war is cruellest. Ferocity, rooted in betrayal.
We had our moments, you and I. Spread out against the sky, like a patient etherised upon a table. Following our more torrid encounters back then my recovery averaged three days. Friends used say it was all I had in common with Jesus. Even if my resurrection was rarely on a Sunday.
We were in thrall to excess. Of love, and life, and spirit. We held with passion to a view that moderation in all things breeds contempt. Yet, does not the road through excess lead to destination wisdom? You helped, of course.
Despite those days when nothing stayed down and what came up was green as New York’s Hudson river on St Patrick’s Day, you made me feel good. Still do.
You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains/You raise me up to walk on stormy seas/I am strong when I am on your shoulders/You raise me up to more than I can be. A hymn to Al.
In your company I am a better person. More genial, convivial and a complete hypocrite when required. And is it not hypocrisy that makes the world go round?
Without you I might even tell some a blatant truth, that the world would be so much better without them. You help me live peacefully alongside the obnoxious. You help me be civilised.
So it pains me to see you portrayed as toxic. You are not. You never forced yourself on anyone or asked to go behind a wheel. And those who would ban you in the name of religion ignore the story of Jesus’s first miracle, when He changed water into wine.
Personally, I prefer changing wine into water through wholly natural means.
Ignore the naysayers. It is not you who clogs up our A&Es at weekends; who causes more cancers than they care to enumerate; or who leaves Temple Bar awash from the innards of hens and stags. It is not you who should be traduced.
See you over the weekend.
Your dear friend,
Patsy
Alcohol from Arabic al-kuhul, al being "the"; kuhul, "a powder used to darken the eyelids".
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