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LEISURE STUDIES IN A GLOBAL ERA

Alcohol, Age,
Generation and
the Life Course

Edited by
Thomas Thurnell-Read
Laura Fenton
Leisure Studies in a Global Era

Series Editors
Karl Spracklen
Leeds Beckett University
Leeds, UK

Karen Fox
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB, Canada
In this book series, we defend leisure as a meaningful, theoretical, ­framing
concept; and critical studies of leisure as a worthwhile intellectual and
pedagogical activity. This is what makes this book series distinctive: we
want to enhance the discipline of leisure studies and open it up to a richer
range of ideas; and, conversely, we want sociology, cultural geographies
and other social sciences and humanities to open up to engaging with
critical and rigorous arguments from leisure studies. Getting beyond con-
cerns about the grand project of leisure, we will use the series to demon-
strate that leisure theory is central to understanding wider debates about
identity, postmodernity and globalisation in contemporary societies
across the world. The series combines the search for local, qualitatively
rich accounts of everyday leisure with the international reach of debates
in politics, leisure and social and cultural theory. In doing this, we will
show that critical studies of leisure can and should continue to play a
central role in understanding society. The scope will be global, striving to
be truly international and truly diverse in the range of authors and topics.

Editorial Board:
John Connell, Professor of Geography, University of Sydney, USA
Yoshitaka Mori, Associate Professor, Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan
Smitha Radhakrishnan, Assistant Professor, Wellesley College, USA
Diane M. Samdahl, Professor of Recreation and Leisure Studies,
University of Georgia, USA
Chiung-Tzu Lucetta Tsai, Associate Professor, National Taipei
University, Taiwan
Walter van Beek, Professor of Anthropology and Religion, Tilburg
University, The Netherlands
Sharon D. Welch, Professor of Religion and Society, Meadville
Theological School, Chicago, USA
Leslie Witz, Professor of History, University of the Western Cape,
South Africa
Thomas Thurnell-Read • Laura Fenton
Editors

Alcohol, Age,
Generation and the
Life Course
Editors
Thomas Thurnell-Read Laura Fenton
Loughborough University University of Manchester
Loughborough, UK Manchester, UK

Leisure Studies in a Global Era

ISBN 978-3-031-04016-0    ISBN 978-3-031-04017-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04017-7

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 Contents

1 Introduction:
 Alcohol, Age, Generation and the Life
Course  1
Thomas Thurnell-Read and Laura Fenton

Part I Alcohol, Generations and Social Change  27

2 Formal
 Generations of Drinkers: Generational Change
in Irish Drinking Culture to 1950 29
John O’Brien

3 Life
 Course and Generational Perspectives on Drinking
in a Mediterranean Culture 53
Franca Beccaria

4 ‘I
 Would Never Dream of Drinking on a Lunch Hour,
But …’: A Bourdieusian Analysis of the Intergenerational
Reproduction of Alcohol Consumption Practices 75
Lyn Brierley-Jones and Jonathan Ling

v
vi Contents

Part II Alcohol, Youth and Adolescence 101

5 Alcohol
 Use and Narratives of ‘Maturing Out’ in the
Transition to Adulthood Among Young Danes103
Maria Dich Herold and Vibeke Asmussen Frank

6 ‘If
 You Cannot Beat Them, You Join Them’: Friendship,
Social Influence and Drinking to Belong Among
Nigerian Youth127
Emeka W. Dumbili, Samuel O. Okpan, Kelechi Uwa-­Robinson,
and Peter M. Azende

7 Risk,
 Control and Hyper-Moderate Drinking Amongst
Generation Z151
Henry Yeomans, Laura Fenton, and Adam Burgess

Part III Alcohol in Adulthood 177

8 Steaming
 Stags and Hammered Hens: The Role of
Alcohol in Premarital Rituals179
Thomas Thurnell-Read and Sheila M. Young

9 Using
 Local Prison Registers to Explore the Relationship
Between Female Drunkenness, Age and Marital Status in
Mid-Victorian Salford203
Craig Stafford

10 De-gendering
 Alcohol Through Food Pairing: Covid-19
and Middle-Aged Women’s Conflicted Roles as
Consumers and Cooks in Japan227
Swee-Lin Ho
 Contents vii

11 ‘There’s
 Nothing Classy About a Drunk 40-year-old’: The
Role of ‘Respectable’ Femininity in the Drinking
Biographies and Sobriety Stories of Midlife Women251
Emily Nicholls

Part IV Alcohol in Later Life 273

12 Alcohol
 Use: Its Meaning and Impact in Older Age275
Beth Bareham and Jennifer Seddon

13 Older
 Drinkers: Alcohol Consumption, Drinking
Context and ‘Successful Ageing’297
John Foster and Betsy Thom

14 ‘I
 Don’t Drink Much Now ‘Cos I’m Old’: Life Course and
Changing Drinking Patterns Among Nigerian Older Men323
Ediomo-Ubong Nelson

I ndex345
 Notes on Contributors

Peter M. Azende received his PhD from the University of Huddersfield, UK,
in 2018. He is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Benue State
University, Makurdi, Nigeria. Peter is a health sociologist interested in human
sexual and reproductive health, mental health, and youth culture and has written
several articles in reputable journals. He is a member of the Nigerian
Anthropological and Sociological Practitioners Association (NASA).
Beth Bareham is a National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR)
fellow at Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University, UK,
researching health and psychosocial factors, mental health and wellbeing, and
service development relating to older people’s alcohol use. She has a back-
ground in health psychology and uses evidence synthesis, qualitative and
intervention development methods in her work. Beth has worked closely with
alcohol services like Drink Wise Age Well and With You in her research, con-
ducting collaborative research studies, and has spent some time embedded
within the service. Beth convenes an international network of alcohol and
ageing researchers within the British Society of Gerontology and Gerontological
Society of America interest groups, and is also an associate editor and Older
Adults Theme Lead for Advances in Dual Diagnosis.
Franca Beccaria is president of Eclectica: Research and Training, Italy;
deputy director of European Master on Drug and Alcohol Studies
(EMDAS), University of Torino, Italy; and an associate professor in the
ix
x Notes on Contributors

Faculty of Social Sciences at University of Helsinki, Finland. She is also

an affiliate of the University of Helsinki Centre for Research on Addiction,
Control and Governance (CEACG). As a sociologist, her main research
interests are drinking cultures, drugs, gambling, addictions, health pro-
motion and health policies, stakeholders and community engagement,
and sociology of health. She has contributed to more than 170 publica-
tions including books, chapters, and scientific articles. Her recent books
include, Alcohol and Generation: Changes in Style and Changing Styles in
Italy and Finland (as editor) and (Carocci, 2010) and Alcol e Giovani:
Riflettere prima dell’uso (‘Alcohol and Youth: To Think Before Using’)
(Giunti Editore, 2013).
Lyn Brierley-Jones is a research fellow in the School of Healthcare at
the University of Leeds, UK. As a sociologist specialising in qualitative
research methods, particularly grounded theory, Lyn has conducted
research into communication in childbirth; stigma, discourses, and
memory-making in stillbirth; prevention strategies in cancer; leadership
in public health; pharmaceutical prescribing; class-based alcohol con-
sumption; and the history of alternative medicine. With a specific inter-
est in the power of sociological theory to explain health phenomena Lyn
has drawn extensively on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Erving Goffman,
Mary Douglas Peter Berger, and Thomas Luckmann. Lyn is part of the
WardSonar project at the University of Leeds, which seeks to use a digital
technology to improve safety in acute mental health settings.
Adam Burgess is an historical sociologist interested in the processes of
social change, particularly changing behaviours. His research has been in
diverse areas—from face mask wearing to guarding drinks from spiking—
organised around themes of risk, individualisation, and, most recently,
generations. He is Professor of Risk Research at the University of Kent, UK.
Emeka W. Dumbili is Lecturer in Sociology at Nnamdi Azikiwe
University, Nigeria. He is an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow
at the Institute for Therapy and Health Research, Kiel, Germany. His
research focuses on the sociology of substance use, gender, leisure, social
theory, and qualitative methodologies.
 Notes on Contributors xi

Laura Fenton is a sociologist. She is a research associate at The University of

Sheffield, UK, where she works on the Wellcome Trust-funded Youth
Drinking in Decline project, and at The University of Manchester, where she
is conducting research for the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)-funded
Austerity and Altered Life-Courses project. Prior to this, Laura worked on the
Girlhood and Later Life project, which explored the implications of post-war
youth transitions for the lives of women born in the UK between 1939 and
1952. Laura’s previous and current research build on her doctoral work on the
changing place of alcohol in the lives of three generations of British women.
Her areas of expertise include alcohol, youth, gender, generation, the life
course, and biographical methods.
John Foster is Reader in Alcohol Policy and Mental Health Studies at
the School of Health Sciences, University of Greenwich, UK. His origi-
nal PhD, awarded in 2001, was based around an evaluation of alcohol
treatment services. Since then, most of his work has focused on different
categories of drinkers including older people with a focus of understand-
ing the balance between the benefits and risks of drinking. This includes
focusing on drinking in older people. He has been part of several
European research teams and the chapter he has co-written with Professor
Betsy Thom reports UK data from a European study. He continues to
focus on drinking at home and is now interested in the impact of the
Covid lockdown on drinking in university student and staff groups.
Vibeke Asmussen Frank is an anthropologist and a professor at the
Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research, Aarhus University, Denmark.
She has written widely within several areas of the alcohol and drug
research field, including on harm reduction initiatives, opioid ­substitution
treatment, prison-based drug treatment, cannabis cultivation, and drug
policies. Most recently, her research interests have revolved around alco-
hol use and intoxication among young people, situational abstinence
from alcohol use, and risk/pleasure related to nitrous oxide use among
young people.
Maria Dich Herold is a social psychologist and an associate professor at
the Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research, Aarhus University, Denmark.
Her main area of research includes alcohol and drug use among various
xii Notes on Contributors

groups of young people, which she explores by means of qualitative

methodologies. She is particularly interested in how young people’s social
relationships and subjectivities shape, and are shaped by, their use of sub-
stances in different contexts, locations, and situations.
Swee-Lin Ho is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department
of Sociology at the National University of Singapore, Singapore. She
worked in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and the UK—as audi-
tor, financial journalist, and corporate executive–for two decades before
completing her graduate studies in sociology and comparative culture at
Sophia University, Japan, and in social anthropology at the University of
Oxford. Her research interests and publications focus on the neoliberal
transformations of work, self-identity, and urban space in Asia; the social
formations of gender and friendship; emergent corporate practices; the
globalisation of East Asian popular culture; ethnographic field methods;
and the business of producing talent, creativity, and passion. Her current
projects are about the ‘Asianisation’ of western classical music and the
political economy of culture (art, food, music, and sport).
Jonathan Ling is Professor of Public Health in the Faculty of Health
Sciences and Wellbeing at the University of Sunderland, UK. A fellow of the
Royal Society of Public Health and a chartered psychologist for many years,
Jonathan has interests across the breadth of public health and health sciences.
He has an extensive research track record in public health and psychology,
publishing widely and has been awarded national funding from the Medical
Research Council (MRC), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC),
and Public Health England, as well as the National Health Service (NHS)
and charities. Jonathan is an associate director of Fuse, the UK Clinical
Research Collaboration (UKCRC)-funded Centre for Translational Research
in Public Health, is a member of the National Institute for Health and Care
Research’s (NIHR’s)’s Research for Patient Benefit regional funding commit-
tee, and has been a member of the nationally recognised NETSCC College
of Experts, Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Psychological and
Community Therapies Panel. Jonathan holds a permanent honorary aca-
demic contract with Public Health England and was invited to be a member
of the College of Experts for the NIHR COVID Recovery and Learning
Research Call 2020.
 Notes on Contributors xiii

Ediomo-Ubong Nelson a sociologist by training, is an associate

researcher with the Centre for Research and Information on Substance
Abuse (CRISA), Nigeria. He is also an alcohol and drug policy advocacy
officer for the International Blue Cross. He has written many papers on
alcohol and other drug use, gender-based violence, and criminal justice
and public health responses to illegal drug use in peer-reviewed journals.
Emily Nicholls is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York,
UK. Her research interests include alcohol, sobriety, gender, and identity,
but particularly the ways in which gendered identities are formed through
the consumption (or non-consumption) of alcohol and how these pro-
cesses are shaped by class and age. Her early research explores negotia-
tions of femininity on a ‘girls’ night out’ and has been published as part
of Palgrave Macmillan’s series Genders and Sexualities in the Social
Sciences. More recently, she has researched women’s experiences of early
sobriety, drinking practices during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the
marketing and consumption of ‘no and low’ alcohol drinks.
John O’Brien is Lecturer in Sociology in the Department of Sociology
and Criminology at University College Cork, UK. His main research
interest is the sociological analysis of alcohol use and its regulation, social
theory, historical sociology, crime and deviance, and penology. His
monograph States of Intoxication: The Place of Alcohol in Civilization was
published in 2018. His recent publications focus on the Irish pub as a
representation in collective identity, sociability in the COVID-19 pan-
demic, sexual aggression in the night-time economy, public health policy
on alcohol, and informal social control in drinking culture. Other work
has focused on topics such as political leadership, contemporary social
theory, public order offences, commemoration, social care services, and
urban regeneration. He is the president of the Sociological Association of
Ireland.
Samuel O. Okpan teaches in the Department of Sociology and
Anthropology at College of Arts and Social Sciences, Evangel University,
Okpoto, Nigeria. He has a background in sociology and anthropology,
specialising in development studies. He has written articles in his research
area and has equally conducted field research for national and interna-
xiv Notes on Contributors

tional agencies such as the Federal Ministry of Environment and the

World Bank. He served as an assistant editor in the Journal of Arts and
Social Sciences and holds the same position in the Nigerian Journal of
Social Problems and Social Policy Review.
Jennifer Seddon is Lecturer in Psychology at Oxford Brookes University,
UK. Her work focuses on applied public health research, with a particu-
lar focus on substance use and ageing. She has written numerous articles
in the drug and alcohol field and has most recently been involved in
evaluating the UK Drink Wise Age Well programme: a prevention-­to-­
treatment programme which aims to reduce alcohol-related harm in peo-
ple aged 50 and over.
Craig Stafford is an early career researcher and teacher. He received his
PhD from University of Liverpool in 2019, with a thesis entitled ‘“The
Worst of Drunkards”: Female Drunkenness in Mid-Victorian Lancashire’.
His research interests include the policing and sentencing of female crim-
inals in Victorian Britain and the life experiences of women prosecuted
for petty offences. He has had articles published in Transactions of the
Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (2017) and Prison Service
Journal (2019). He has contributed a chapter to an edited collection,
entitled Policing Women: Histories in the Western World, 1800–1950, due
to be published by Palgrave Macmillan. He teaches history at University
of Liverpool.
Betsy Thom is Professor of Health Policy and co-director of the Drug
and Alcohol Research Centre at Middlesex University London, UK. She
is an honorary professor in the Department of Psychology and Behavioural
Sciences at Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research includes drug and
alcohol policy and practice, with current focus on young people, drug-­
related deaths, and co-production approaches to research. She has man-
aged European, national, and local research projects and led the
development of a cross-national masters’ programme on drug and alco-
hol studies. Her recent books include Alcohol, Power and Public Health: A
Comparative Study of Alcohol Policy (co-authored with Butler, Elmeland,
Nicholls; 2017) and Risk and Substance Use: Framing Dangerous People
and Dangerous Places (edited with Susanne MacGregor; 2020).
 Notes on Contributors xv

Thomas Thurnell-Read is Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the School of

Social Sciences and Humanities at Loughborough University, UK. His
research on drinking culture has been published in leading international
journals and he is a regular contributor to national and international
media debates relating to pub culture, alcohol, and drunkenness. He is
the editor of Drinking Dilemmas: Space, Culture and Identity (2015) and
is a founding member of the British Sociological Association (BSA)’s
Alcohol Study Group.
Kelechi Uwa-Robinson is a PhD research student at the University of
Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. She is currently working on her thesis in migra-
tion, gender studies, sexuality, and reintegration. Her research focuses on
health-seeking behaviours, drug use, sexuality education, gender studies,
and quantitative/qualitative research methodologies.
Henry Yeomans is Associate Professor of Criminology at the University
of Leeds, UK. He specialises in historical approaches to the study of
drinking which examine how and why drinking behaviours, as well as the
regulatory frameworks which govern them, have changed through time.
He has previously investigated the development of moderate drinking
guidelines and the popularity of the temporary abstinence c­ ampaign Dry
January. He has written widely in social science journals and authored the
2014 monograph Alcohol and Moral Regulation.
Sheila M. Young is an ethnologist and honorary research fellow at the
Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen, UK. Her doctoral research
was on the form, meaning, and function of the hen party, and she has
presented her work to audiences in the UK, Sweden, Germany, Denmark,
and the USA. Her recent book Prenuptial Rituals in Scotland: Blackening
the Bride and Decorating the Hen (2019) examines two prenuptial rituals
practised by women in Scotland: the hen party and the blackening. She
has made frequent appearances on TV and radio as an authority on both
these rituals. Her current research is on the challenges faced by couples
getting married during the COVID-19 pandemic and the long-term
changes the pandemic may bring about to the marriage ritual.
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Recorded per-capita (+15) alcohol consumption trends in

Italy and Finland. (Source: Global Information System on
Alcohol and Health (GISAH), 2021—https://www.who.int/
data/gho/data/themes/global-information-system-on-alcohol-
and-health)56
Fig. 3.2 Proportion of all premature deaths (defined as deaths in
people 15–64 years of age) in the EU caused by alcohol
consumption by sex and region. (Source: Rehm, 2012, 6) 57
Fig. 9.1 Number of drunkenness committals by summary area,
1869–1875. (Source: Strangeways Prison Female Registers,
1869–1875)210
Fig. 9.2 Age groups of women committed for drunkenness, Salford,
1869–1875. (Source: Strangeways Prison Female Registers,
1869–1875)210
Fig. 9.3 Committals for drunkenness, marital status by age group,
Salford, 1869–1875. (Source: Strangeways Prison Female
Registers, 1869–1875) 214
Fig. 13.1 Frequency of drinking contexts and relationships (n = 863) 308

xvii
 List of Tables

Table 13.1 Sociodemographic characteristics of the sample (n = 1087) 306

Table 13.2 Principal components analysis of context and relationship
variables310
Table 14.1 Socio-demographic information of the participants (n = 16) 328

xix
 1
Introduction: Alcohol, Age, Generation
and the Life Course
Thomas Thurnell-Read and Laura Fenton

This book is about alcohol and its role in people’s lives. Lives which
unfold as we age and move in and out of different roles and responsibili-
ties and across which alcohol, drinking and drunkenness are likely to
offer different rewards, pose diverse risks and harms and mean different
things. Consistent with wider developments in social theory emphasising
temporality and dynamic processes of change over time (e.g. May, 2011),
the book explores how the centrality, or marginality, of alcohol to our
lives changes significantly as we age. From youthful initiation and experi-
mentation in adolescence, to the culturally expectations of the rituals and
rites of passage that punctuate the journey into and through adulthood,
alcohol is involved with both mundane daily routines and with special
occasions. Across many cultures, alcohol is often drunk at important

T. Thurnell-Read (*)
Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK
e-mail: t.thurnell-read@lboro.ac.uk
L. Fenton
University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
e-mail: laura.fenton-2@manchester.ac.uk

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

T. Thurnell-Read, L. Fenton (eds.), Alcohol, Age, Generation and the Life Course,
Leisure Studies in a Global Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04017-7_1
2 T. Thurnell-Read and L. Fenton

occasions and significant moments in life: to celebrate a birth, to con-

gratulate a marriage and to console the bereaved. Indeed, in all cultures
where alcohol is widely consumed it appears to play some functional role
in marking out special events, festivities and ceremonies. Yet, it is often in
the minutia of daily life that the social and cultural uses of drinking alco-
hol are most keenly felt. As the chapters of this book illustrate, within
each specific cultural context alcohol means different things to different
people and, in being situated in biographical and generational time,
observable and often sticking differences characterise the use and purpose
of alcohol amongst different age groups and generation cohorts.
Existing understandings of age or cohort specific drinking tend to
stem almost exclusively from epidemiological approaches. Thus, statisti-
cal analyses demonstrate how rates of drinking and abstinence vary by
age, birth cohort and gender (Meng et al., 2014) and changing levels of
consumption are shown to be patterned across the life course and around
key moments such as early adulthood and middle age (Britton et al.,
2015; Leggat et al., 2022). Whilst such approaches are useful in illumi-
nating important patterns in the intersections of age, birth cohort and
alcohol consumption, not least in showing how incidence of alcohol-­
related mortality is concentrated in particular birth cohorts (e.g. Walsh
et al., 2021), they are limited in their ability to tell us about the lived
meanings of drinking practices. Moreover, alcohol is not simply drunk,
and when people drink to get drunk they do not simply enact a physio-
logical process which alters their bodies, senses and perceptions. Rather,
alcohol and its consumption are woven into the social and cultural fabric
of everyday life (Douglas, 1987; Thurnell-Read, 2015) and serve an
important function in the creation and expression of identity (Wilson,
2005). As the sociologist Troy Duster is noted to have remarked, ‘alcohol
is to social science what dye is to microscopy’, meaning that the study of
it can reveal ‘the structures and relations of a society and the process of
stasis and change’ (Barrows & Room, 1991, 1). In this spirit, recent
scholarship in the social sciences and humanities has increasingly brought
to the fore a broader range of drinking practices across the life course,
with childhood (Jayne & Valentine, 2016), youth (Griffin et al., 2009;
MacLean, 2016), early adulthood (Smith, 2014), midlife (Emslie et al.,
2012) and old age (Haighton, 2016) subject to varying degrees of aca-
demic interest.
 1 Introduction: Alcohol, Age, Generation and the Life Course 3

Both long-running and newly emerged debates about the place of

alcohol, drinking and drunkenness in the lives of individuals, and in soci-
ety more generally, either directly or implicitly involve concerns about
age, generations and the life course. Indeed, these concerns are at the core
of some of the defining trends that shape the evolving field of alcohol
studies. This includes concerns about educating young drinkers (Bagnall,
1991) for whom alcohol is one of many harmful but enticing risks (Plant
& Plant, 1992) and the rise (Measham, 1996) and more recent decline
(Oldham et al., 2018) of a culture of hedonistic intoxication amongst
young people. Drinking in adolescence and young adulthood remains a
prominent interest amongst alcohol scholars (e.g. Conroy & Measham,
2019). We can also see a more recent emergence of studies of alcohol in
midlife (Hunt and Lyons 2012; 2013; Brierley-Jones et al., 2014) and the
emergence of home drinking as the dominant mode of alcohol consump-
tion in adulthood (Foster & Ferguson, 2012; Holloway et al., 2008;
MacLean et al., 2022).
This book is a timely contribution to these unfolding debates. The
chapters examine the intersections between biography, history and social
change. Foregrounding age, generation and the life course in the study of
alcohol and drinking therefore offers an important opportunity to under-
stand the centrality of alcohol to processes of ageing and to both life
course transitions relating to work, leisure and the family and wider
social, cultural and socioeconomic changes shaping generational shifts in
the meaning and function of alcohol for individuals, groups and society
in general. Given the recent expansion of interest in drinking beyond
youth to other periods of the life course, and ongoing re-evaluations of
youth drinking as well as investigations of increased drinking among gen-
erations now in later life, the book makes a timely intervention at an
important moment in the development of research and thinking about
alcohol. Importantly, life course and generational approaches involve get-
ting away from treating particular age groups of drinkers (or non-­
drinkers)—especially ‘younger people’ and ‘older people’—as static
categories that are not subject to change over time, both individually and
collectively.
4 T. Thurnell-Read and L. Fenton

The ‘Rites’ and Wrongs of Alcohol and Ageing

In many countries there is a culturally prescribed and socially reinforced
script or chronology of a person’s developing relationship with alcohol.
Children are aware of alcohol and its effects on adults, and their percep-
tions and attitudes to alcohol and drunkenness form over many years
before initial initiation might occur and, later still, legal purchase and
socially condoned consumption might take place (Fossey, 1994; Jayne &
Valentine, 2016). After childhood inexperience, some initiation into
alcohol and drunkenness is followed by increased experimentation and
(mis)adventure (Johnson, 2013; McKay et al., 2011). The association of
alcohol and intoxication with ‘coming of age’ is socially approved and
culturally reinforced (Loughran, 2010) and as one matures into adult-
hood, alcohol becomes an accepted and expected component of leisure
and friendships for many. As shown in the work of British criminologist
Oliver Smith (2014), drinking alcohol in the pubs, bars and night clubs
of the night-time economy is an integral part of the performance of
youthful adulthood but one that carries into the middle years of adult-
hood with less ease, with marriage, parenthood and work responsibilities
often prompting the need for a more responsible approach to be taken.
In later life, alcohol might retain its allure, particularly as what might be
seen as a well-earned pleasure in retirement and an opportunity to main-
tain or revive important social connections (Thurnell-Read, 2021).
However, with health a greater concern, drinking occasions diminish and
perhaps stop altogether, whilst any ongoing alcohol consumption must
be negotiated and justified (Gough et al., 2020).
Lately, however, this long-assumed patterning of a drinking ‘career’ or
‘biography’—from youthful experimentation and excess, a maturing out
in adulthood followed by a decline leading to eventual cessation, or at
least moderation, in older age—appears less certain. Importantly, while
population-level data may on the whole appear to present a uniform and
perhaps orderly transition, with some evidence of change over time,
closer examination of lived experience shows the tensions and ambigui-
ties involved in moving between stages of the drinking life course. The
normative and moral framing of alcohol consumption and drunkenness
 1 Introduction: Alcohol, Age, Generation and the Life Course 5

is dependent on the age, as well as other social characteristics, of those

doing the drinking, meaning that age-specific drinking practices have
come to define debates, discourses and representations of ‘good’ and ‘bad’
drinking. In particular, flashpoints in discussions about alcohol and age
relate to assumed appropriateness not just of drinking and drunkenness
but related concerns including how intoxication involves a loss of con-
trol, a loss of self and, by association, how that means our ideas and
responses to it are linked to how we view the selfhood of individuals,
which changes over time and as we age (Hutton, 2020).
Academic and public debates have, however, for some time focused
rather narrowly on youth drinking, with the assumed heavy drinking
students and working-class youth receiving particular attention. This
concern or preoccupation with the drinking habits and misadventures of
adolescents and young adults gained pace from the 1990s onwards. Thus,
there was a repeated fascination with the emergence of ‘alcopops’ as being
cynically, yet highly profitably, marketed to young drinkers (McKeganey,
1998; Metzner & Kraus, 2008) and the media fascination with the night-­
time economy settings of city centre bars and nightclubs. From this con-
text, as Nicholls (2009, 236) observes:

[A] visual language began to emerge in mass-media depictions of ‘binge

drinking’: photographs and CCTV footage seemed to reveal a nocturnal
pandemonium of violent young men, sexually vulnerable (or promiscuous)
young women, and harassed police in luminous jackets struggling to cope
with the disorder that explored on the streets as young binge drinkers stag-
gered from one garish venue to the next.

To some extent, scholarship on alcohol has shared this preoccupation

with youth drinking and with consumption which takes place in urban
settings on weekend nights with a focus on intoxication and excess. Yet,
much academic research in this area has provided a necessary rejoinder to
media sensationalism and moralising. The practice and meaning of youth
drinking varies between countries and changes over time within them
(see Järvinen & Room, 2007), meaning caution must be urged when
making generalisations about youth drinking. Further, research has added
nuance to understandings of the motivations, pleasures and tensions of
6 T. Thurnell-Read and L. Fenton

adolescents drinking by showing how many young people maintain

friendships and both perform and experiment with constructions of
identity (Demant & Järvinen, 2006) and important contributions are
made by Jayne et al. (2011) and Jayne and Valentine (2016) in their stud-
ies that focus on alcohol within the home and with the family unit.
Equally, there are notable changes in youth drinking cultures in the UK
and several other high-income countries, where those currently in their
mid-teens to mid-twenties are in fact both less likely to drink than any
other age group and are also increasingly more likely to be entirely absti-
nent (Oldham et al., 2018; ONS, 2018). Shaped by a complex and deep-­
lying array of social, cultural, economic, policy and technological factors
(Pape et al. 2018), this is a trend that is beginning to counter many
assumptions about the long taken-for-granted character of youth
drinking.
Aligned with the preoccupation with youth drinking in marketing,
print and broadcast media, policy and academic scholarship is the relative
lack of visibility of both midlife and older drinkers. Indeed, in academic
research in general, and public health specifically, middle-aged drinkers
are ‘rarely regarded as inherently problematic in the same way that youth
drinkers are’ (Muhlack et al., 2018, 1). Similarly, while the assumed
decline in drinking in older age is supported by some longitudinal data
(e.g. Moos et al., 2009), but problematised elsewhere (Meng et al., 2014),
there is increasing concern that alcohol consumption is becoming more
widespread in older age groups (Tigerstedt & Bloomfield, 2020). With
this comes a belated but important emergence of academic concern with
the potentially harmful outcomes of continued alcohol consumption
into older age (O’Connell et al., 2003). This is perhaps best illustrated by
the Royal College of Psychiatrists (2011, 2018) noting specific concerns
about a generation cohort now entering older age with a prevalence of
substance use unseen in previous generations and, notably, who are
poorly understood and thinly provided for in terms of treatment and
support. Thus, these pressing public health concerns around alcohol
harms relates to ageing also speak to wider issues about the cultural poli-
tics and political economy of age and ageing (Bristow, 2016) and, more
generally, about the health of individuals and societies as they age.
 1 Introduction: Alcohol, Age, Generation and the Life Course 7

Why Age, Generation and the Life Course?

The book is organised around three related themes: age, generation and
the life course. Although each is closely interconnected to the others, it is
useful here to consider each separately and in turn reflect on its relevance
to advancing debates in alcohol studies and beyond. The first of these,
age, is deceptively complex in both its lay and academic uses. While age
commonly refers to chronological age (Pilcher, 1995) and ageing to the
chronological and biological processes by which individuals mature and
become older, passing designated milestones such as ‘turning 18’ and
‘hitting 40’, increasingly common are more fluid and multifaceted under-
standings that acknowledge the interplay of biological, social and cultural
factors (Gilleard & Higgs, 2014). ‘Age’ and ‘ageing’ are therefore terms
that reference a blend of physical, functional, social and societal elements
(Kunkel & Morgan, 2015). Ages or age groups, such as childhood, ado-
lescence and adulthood, are socially constructed in that they are catego-
ries defined through the social behaviour, interactions and discourses
which describe and characterise them.
In Western countries, childhood is generally seen as a particularly sig-
nificant time of life (Aries 1960), one that is critical for subsequent devel-
opment, with children viewed as requiring protection from influences
understood to be harmful, including alcohol. As such, few countries do
not place some sort of legal drinking age on the purchase and consump-
tion of alcohol. This assigning of a legal drinking age involves assump-
tions about rights, responsibilities and risks. Yet there remains considerable
variation in the informal social and cultural practices informing the pro-
cess of initiation into drinking. Mediterranean drinking cultures, for
example, typically demonstrate a different perspective on alcohol in
childhood, emphasising the gradual introduction in the form of small
amounts during meal times (see Beccaria in this book). So too in adult-
hood we see normative social expectations and cultural practices shaping
an individual’s experience of drinking alcohol. Thurnell-Read’s research
has shown that particular orientations to alcohol exist within specific age
groups, such as university students (Thurnell-Read et al., 2018), and
inform both practices and perceptions of what is, or is not, acceptable
8 T. Thurnell-Read and L. Fenton

drinking amongst people of different ages (Thurnell-Read, 2017). For

example, alcohol and drunkenness play a role in shaping perceptions of
male bodies and behaviour, with perceptions of younger and older men
being framed as ‘out of control’ or ‘out of shape’, respectively (Thurnell-­
Read, 2013). In middle or later life, alcohol takes on different functions,
meanings and tensions and the balance between pleasure and harm shifts
in various ways. Alcohol consumption, particularly pub-based beer
drinking in small all-male groups, helps middle-aged men maintain
friendships and both provide and receive social support (Emslie et al.,
2013). In midlife, women’s drinking is negotiated in relation to compet-
ing expectations of femininity, as is highlighted by a now growing body
of research in the UK and Australia in recent years (e.g. Emslie et al 2015a
and 2015b; Lyons et al. 2015; Foley et al., 2021; Kersey et al., 2022;
Nicholls, 2019; this book). Further still, amongst some older people in
the UK, pubs appear valued as important sites of social connection even
when they are often found to also be spaces containing varied physical,
social and economic barriers (Thurnell-Read, 2021).
The second theme, generation, is a concept with widespread everyday
usage but sporadic application within the social sciences (Pilcher, 1994).
Mannheim’s (1952) social-generation theory typically approaches birth
cohorts as groups who experience similar socio-historical conditions in
youth, with consequences for their forms of cultural expression and indi-
vidual subjectivities across their adult life. In other words, members of a
social generation are believed to be shaped, at least in part, by the socio-­
historical conditions of their youth in relation to their perspectives, pref-
erences and so forth, and to carry these dispositions forward in time, into
adulthood and beyond. Prominent examples of generation cohorts
include the Baby Boomers, who in being born immediately after World
War II and coming of age during or soon after the progressive social
upheavals of the 1960s are said to have benefitted from a particular com-
bination of social and economic mobility, and Millennials born in
between the early 1980s and late 1990s, who experienced an upbringing
marked by rapid changes in relation to politics, technology, education
and the environment. With reference to these generations, in particular,
there is a revived concern with difference, inequalities and tensions both
within (Woodman and Wyn 2015) and between generations (Martin &
 1 Introduction: Alcohol, Age, Generation and the Life Course 9

Roberts, 2021), with the conflict and ‘deficits’ between generations lately
framing fierce debates. Additionally, in research on ageing and later life,
valuable contributions have examined how the Baby Boomer generation
may be ‘redefining’ ageing (Edmunds and Turner 2002; Biggs et al. 2007;
Gilleard and Higgs 2007; Phillipson, 2007). Nevertheless, the value of
the social generations approach has been contested, particularly in the
field of youth studies (e.g. Roberts & France, 2020). As critics point out,
biographical discontinuities between youth experiences and later points of
the life course may also be pertinent (Day, 2007; Tinkler, Fenton and
Cruz, in press).
With regard to drinking, a generational analysis would concern itself
with the patterns in where, how and why people buy and consume alco-
hol and how these may interact with both identity and belonging and
with wider socioeconomic transformations. For example, Fenton’s (2018)
research investigates the complex personal and collective drinking histo-
ries of three generations of British women born between the 1940s and
1990s. Examining their drinking biographies reveals both how their ways
of using and thinking about alcohol had shifted over time as they aged
and how noticeable variations existed between the three generations,
with the oldest generation having had less experience of alcohol in youth
but cohorts born in the 1970s and 1990s recalling pronounced interest
and investment in drinking during their adolescence. The shifting politi-
cal economies of alcohol policy, industry and culture meanings and prac-
tices of alcohol consumption are likely shaped by such events as the
so-called feminisation of alcohol, entailing the increased involvement of
women in both public and private drinking over several generations in
the second half of the twentieth century (Gutzke, 2016), and the emer-
gence of the night-time economy as post-industrial cities became recon-
figured around leisure, consumption and hedonism from the late 1980s
onwards (Hayward & Hobbs, 2007; Roberts, 2006). The Baby Boomers
and Generation X came of age at specific times where a growing accep-
tance of intoxication as both a personal and collective pleasure combined
with a seemingly never ending expansion of opportunities to buy and
consume alcohol, from overseas holidays to the increased availability of
low-cost alcohol in supermarkets. Thus, for those coming of age in high-­
income countries during the second half of the twentieth
10 T. Thurnell-Read and L. Fenton

century—decades characterised by rising consumption levels and reregu-

lation of markets—drink more than preceding cohorts of people in later
life did (Meng et al., 2014). Amongst this generation, then, it is hardly
surprising that the personal pleasures and social connections forged in
drinking spaces retain an appeal, even into older age (e.g. Smith, 2013;
Thurnell-Read, 2021). Meanwhile, as noted earlier, present generations
of teenagers and young adults are understood to be negotiating diverse
relationships with alcohol through new practices of abstinence and mod-
eration (see Yeomans, Fenton and Burgess, this book), giving rise to the
somewhat condescending label ‘Generation Sensible’ (BBC News, 2018)
being applied to a generation more risk averse and moderate that than
either their parents’ or grandparents’ generations.
The third theme, life course, encompasses a range of social identities
that ebb and flow in complex ways, the analysis of which requires consid-
eration of familial roles, work, leisure and consumption and gender and
embodiment (Hockey & James, 2003). The life course is therefore seen
to involve adopting social identities—the moving between which are
often marked by rites of passage and other social rules and processes that
discipline the progress between roles and identities—and having histories
told, both by ourselves and by others. There has also been a greater appre-
ciation of both the multiple and changing ways in which life course tran-
sitions are navigated and the agency with which, particularly, young
people make ‘active efforts to shape their biographies and the structured
set of opportunities and limitations that define pathways into adulthood’
(Shanahan, 2000, 668). Life course perspective studies have been made
of food (Sydner et al., 2007), leisure (Heikkinen, 2021) and sport
(Hirvensalo & Lintunen, 2011), but are only recently finding application
in studies of alcohol and other intoxicants.
Bringing a life course perspective to bear on alcohol, drinking and
drunkenness involves an awareness of the role played by alcohol in the
biographies of individuals, such as the transition to adulthood (Seaman
& Ikegwuonu, 2011), while attending to the ways that alcohol and drink-
ing are often central to the biographical narratives used to tell the story of
our lives to ourselves and to others (e.g. Nicholl’s chapter). It also involves
acknowledging that the negotiation of one’s relationship with alcohol
and intoxication is, for many, interwoven with the changing roles and
 1 Introduction: Alcohol, Age, Generation and the Life Course 11

responsibilities where, as Jayne, Valentine and Holloway (2011, 53)

observe, ‘the life course, and particularly significant events such as mar-
riages/partnership and the arrival of children, often mark changes in
people’s drinking practices’. Thus, life course transitions often precipitate
changes in how and with whom the one spends one’s time and an associ-
ated shift in relational priorities, such as building and attending to rela-
tionships with friends, colleagues, partners and children, and shape the
nature and extent of drinking practices and their meanings (Fenton, 2018).
Examining key moments in the life course, such as getting married,
offers opportune moments to reflect on the role of alcohol in both per-
sonal identity and group belonging. For example, during the stag tour
pre-martial ritual, extreme intoxication marks the status transition of
becoming a married man (Thurnell-Read, 2012; also this book, Young
and Thurnell-Read). Away from these more overt celebrations and ritu-
als, the often tricky navigation through the life course, from one stage to
another, involves subtle and ongoing revaluations of one’s relationship
with drinking and with the times and spaces of alcohol consumption. As
Kersey et al. (2022) suggest, understanding the place of alcohol in the
lives of midlife women necessitates consideration of multifaceted experi-
ences relating to work, leisure and family life and a diversity of intersect-
ing social identities constituting the negotiation of parental, social and
economic roles. This is well demonstrated in recent research in Australia,
where Foley et al. (2021) examine the place of alcohol in the lives of
midlife women in Southern Australia to highlight the affective role played
by drinking in the navigation of life course transitions, with alcohol being
associated with complex emotions and ambiguous feelings of both free-
dom and constraint. Similarly, Ward et al. (2022) identify a telling inter-
section of class, gender and age, with midlife women from different class
backgrounds incorporating alcohol into their lives in different ways
depending on their past, present and future relationships with work, fam-
ily, leisure, health and wellbeing (Ward et al., 2022).
Roles such as ‘student’ or ‘parent’ come with associations and expecta-
tions in relation to alcohol. In this sense, ‘student’ has become viewed as
a life-stage specific status and identity, one that is closely associated with
excessive drinking, meaning that in many countries the association of
being a university student with things like freedom, sociability,
12 T. Thurnell-Read and L. Fenton

experimentation and pleasure seeking mean that the student identity is,
for many, bound up with frequent and excessive alcohol consumption
(Piacentini et al., 2012). This is particularly true for young individuals
living independently for the first time with whilst cohabiting with other
students (Brown & Murphy, 2020); however, diverse relationships with
alcohol and, in particular, intoxication are revealed by research with a
more diverse mix of international students (Thurnell-Read et al., 2018).
Such is this association, in the UK at least, that abstinent students must
negotiate their identity relative to a social context in which excessive
drinking was normalised and use strategies to cope with pressure to drink
and findings ways to communicate to their peers that did not drink
(Conroy & de Visser, 2014). In contrast, the role of ‘parent’ comes with
a social expectation for moderation of drinking and greater pressures to
negotiate a renewed relationship with alcohol (Killingsworth, 2006).
Mother’s drinking, in particular, has received considerable attention in
public health research, with pregnant women often the intended recipi-
ents of public health messaging around alcohol (Dimova et al., 2021) and
with mothers having to undertake discursive work present themselves as
responsible drinkers in light of a strong awareness of the likelihood of
moral judgement (Vicario et al., 2021). However, other research has
highlighted the growing popularity of a ‘mummy wine culture’ in alcohol
marketing and social media in much of the English-speaking world
(Bosma et al., 2022), which may be read as both trivialising and normal-
ising a certain aesthetic and ethos of alcohol consumption as co-existing
with the role of mother. In contrast, but not surprisingly so, how father-
hood affects men’s drinking has received limited attention. Yet, there is
some suggestion that, for many men, becoming a father presents a
moment of reflection and change in relation to alcohol consumption
habits with some men reducing or ceasing drinking in support of a preg-
nant partner and, following birth, in response to shifting roles and duties
(Dimova et al., 2021).
Age, generation and the life course are interrelated but different terms
and each acts as a lens through which to view and understand the pres-
ence of alcohol in the social worlds of individuals, groups and communi-
ties. They share in common a sense of temporality in that they relate to
the passage of time and the journey that individuals and groups make
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
with them on my way south to Dentam. During those two days—for I
flew only two days—I was attacked by a newly fledged hawk, and I
gave him the best defeat of his life. It was in this wise; one morning
as I was flying over the woods below Sikkim, I heard the wind
screech overhead. I knew what that meant now, so I played a trick. I
stopped all on a sudden and the hawk, who was falling upon me,
missed me and fell away down, grazing his wing on a tree-top. I rose
higher and flew fast, but he caught up and then I began to make
circles in the air. I rose high, oh so high that my lungs could not
breathe the air there, and I had to come down again.
"But no sooner had I descended than with an ominous screech and
cry the hawk fell upon me. Fortunately, then and there, for the first
time in my life I tried to tumble as I had seen my father do, and I
succeeded in making a double tumble, then shooting up like a
fountain. Again the hawk missed and rose to attack, but I gave him
no chance. I flew at him. And just as I was passing him, he dipped
down, then up, and clutched at me; again I tumbled, striking him so
hard that he lost his balance. I do not know what happened, but that
very moment I felt something sucking me down down to the depth of
the earth. My wings were powerless. I fell as an eagle falls—heavy
and inevitable—striking the hawk on the head with my full weight. I
think the blow stunned him. He too fell, and was lost in the woods
below, but I was glad to find myself on the branch of an ilex tree.
"I had been sucked down by an air current. Since that first
experience of mine, I have met many others like it but I have never
understood why it was that above certain trees and streams the air
gets very cold and makes a current that draws into itself the bird that
strikes it. I had to learn the lesson of flying in those currents after
being whirled up and down by them. But I do not hate them, since
the first air current I encountered saved my life.
"Sitting on that ilex tree I became so hungry that it drove me to fly
home. Luckily, no soulless hawk obstructed my arrow-like flight.
"But my successful escape from that newly-fledged murderer gave
me back my courage, and as soon as you came home I said to
myself: 'Now that he, my friend, has seen me alive, he will not worry
about me. I must fly anew through the falcon-infested air and test my
courage.'
"Now began my real Odyssey. I went northwards to the eagle's nest,
and stopped at the Lamasery where a holy man had blessed me on
an earlier occasion. There I re-visited Mr. and Mrs. Swift, my old
friends. Moving further north I went past Singalele at last and
reached the eyrie of the eagles who had flown away. So I made
myself comfortable there, but not too happy, for the eagles leave all
kinds of refuse in their nests, and I am afraid they swarm with
vermin. Though I spent my day in the eagle's nest, I decided to
spend the night in a tree, free from horrid insects. After a couple of
days, my going in and out of the eyrie gave me great prestige among
other birds. They feared me, perhaps because they took me for a
sort of eagle. Even the hawks began to give me a wide berth. That
gave me all the confidence that I needed, so early one morning,
seeing a white wedge of birds coming south, flying very high, I joined
them. They did not mind my joining them, they were wild geese
going towards Ceylon and beyond, in the quest of a sunny ocean.
"Those geese, after two hours' flight, as the day became warmer,
descended onto a rapid mountain stream. Unlike the eagles, they
rarely looked downwards, but watched the horizon lines. They spied
a little ribbon of whitish blue far off against the sky, and flew in a
slowly declining straight line till it seemed as if the earth were rising
to meet us, and soon all plunged into the silver stream, for now, the
waters looked more silvery than blue. They floated on the water, but
as I knew that I was not web-footed, I sat on a tree and watched their
antics. You know how flat and ugly the bills of geese are, but now I
saw the reason for it. They used them like pincers on things such as
shells that grew on the side of the banks. Every now and then a
goose would put his bill on a plant or a shell, then wring it out of
position as a butcher would wring a duck's neck. After that it would
devour its victim wholesale, crushing it in its powerful throat, but ere
it passed very far down its size dwindled to nothing. I saw one fellow
do worse than that. He found a fish—as lean as a water snake—in a
hole under the bank; he began to pull it. The more he pulled the
thinner and longer it got. Slowly, after a terrific tug of war, the poor
fellow was dragged from his hole. Then the goose hopped up the
shore and flung it on the ground. His bill had crushed the part it had
held onto, nearly into pulp, so no wonder his wriggling victim was
already dead. Then from nowhere walked up to him another goose.
(By the way, are not geese the most ungainly birds when they are
not flying or swimming? On the water they resemble dreams floating
on pools of sleep, but on land they hobble like cripples on crutches!)
By now the two geese were quarrelling. They pulled one another's
feathers, they slapped with their wings, they kicked each other with
their feet every time they hopped up above the ground. While they
were thus engaged, oblivious of their bone of contention, a cat-like
creature, probably an otter, pounced from among the reeds, grabbed
the dead eel and vanished. Now the geese declared a truce, but too
late! Oh, they have no more sense than, well—geese! Compared
with them, we pigeons seem paragons of cleverness.
"After they had stopped fighting, the chief goose cried—'Cluck, caw,
caw, caw!' That instant all of them paddled hard to gather
momentum. A few extra wing-beats and they were in the air. How
beautiful they looked now! That soft soughing of vast wings, their
necks and bodies like drawings against the sky, making a severe
eye-pleasing wedge. I shall never forget it.
"But every flock has its straggler. One fellow was left behind,
because he was still struggling with a fish. At last he secured it, and
flew up in quest of a tree where he could eat it under cover.
Suddenly from the empty air an enormous hawk attacked him. The
goose rose higher but the indefatigable hawk did not relent. Up and
up they circled, screaming and quacking. Suddenly a faint but clear
echo of a honk was heard. The chief of the flock was calling the
straggler; that distracted him. Hardly knowing what he was doing, he
honked back an answer. That instant the fish fell from his mouth. It
began to fall like a leaf. The hawk dipped, and just as he was going
to pierce it with his talons, down the air came a surge and roar. In a
trice an eagle fell as a rock falls down a high precipice. That hawk
ran for his life, and that gave me a great deal of pleasure to behold.
"Under the eagle's two wings like vast sails, the talons forked out
lightning fashion and grabbed the fish—then the monarch of the air
in his shining armour of brown gold sailed away, the wind ruffling the
feathers above his knees. Far away, the hawk was still running for
his life!
"I am glad he went very far away, for I had to fly about in quest of a
caravan road where I could get some seeds dropped by men. I soon
found some and after a tolerably decent meal, I perched on a tree
and went to sleep. When I woke it was mid-afternoon. I decided to fly
away up, to reach the blessed Lamasery, and visit my friends the
swifts. My flight was unattended by any mishap, for I had learned to
fly carefully by now. I generally went very far up and looked down, as
well as at the horizon. Though I have not as long a neck as a wild
goose, yet I turned and took side glances every few minutes in order
to make sure that nothing was attacking my rear.
"I reached the monastery just in time, as the Lamas were getting
ready to stand on the edge of their chapel in order to pour
benediction upon the world during sunset. Mr. and Mrs. Swift were
flying near the nest where their three youngsters were put to bed. Of
course they were glad to receive me. After their vesper services, the
monks fed me, and the sweet old Lama said something about a
blessing that some one called Infinite Compassion had put upon me.
Then I flew from his hand feeling absolutely fearless. In that state of
mind and body I entered my nest next to the swifts under the eaves
of the Lamasery.
"The nights in October are cold. In the morning while the priests rang
their bells, the little swifts flew about for exercise while their parents
and I had to fly to shake off the chill of the morning. That day I spent
there in order to help them make preparations for their journey south.
I was surprised to learn that they intended to build a nest in Ceylon
or Africa whither they were going. I explained to them that a swift's
nest is not at all an easy thing to construct. Then in order to assuage
my thirst for knowledge they told me how they erect their homes."
CHAPTER VIII
 GAY-NECK'S ODYSSEY (Continued)
n order to make clear to you the swift's skill at
architecture, let me first of all draw attention to the
swift's handicaps. He has a small beak fit for
catching flying insects. His mouth is very wide to
enable him to catch his prey while he is on the
wing. Very few insects can escape his wide open
mouth as he comes down on them. As he is very
small, Mr. Swift cannot lift much weight. No wonder his house is built
out of slender materials such as straw and twigs of trees no thicker
than a middle-sized needle.
"The first time I saw a swift he looked paralysed and deformed. All
swifts know that they have wretched legs. The bird has hardly any
legs to balance upon. His small feet, made for sticking on to places
like fish-hooks, emerge right out of his body; his little hooklike claws
seem inflexible. He has not enough leg between his body and his
feet, and this deprives him of the springiness which longer legs
supply to other birds. No wonder he cannot hop nor jump. But that
defect is squared by his one advantage—he can cling to stone
palisades, marble eaves, and alabaster friezes of houses as no other
bird can. I have seen my friend Swift hang on to polished walls as if
they were corrugated surfaces.
"Under these handicaps, all he can do is to choose holes in walls
just under the eaves for his home. But there he cannot lay his eggs,
for they would roll off. So he catches flying straws and small falling
leaves, and glues them to the stone floor of his nest with his saliva.
That is the secret of his skill at architecture. His saliva is wonderful; it
dries and hardens like the best glue of the cabinet makers. When the
nest is made ready, the long white eggs are laid. Among the swifts
women are not so emancipated as amongst the pigeons. Our
women enjoy equal rights with men, but the female swift has always
the larger part of the work to do. For instance, Mr. Swift never sits on
the eggs; he lets his wife do it. Occasionally he brings her food
during the day, but otherwise he spends all his waking hours visiting
male swifts whose wives are similarly occupied. I told my friend Swift
he ought to copy the pigeons and give more freedom to his wife, but
he seemed to think this a pet joke of mine.
"At last our preparations were made and one fine autumn morning
the five swifts and I set out in a southerly direction, piloted by Mr.
Swift. We never went in a straight line, but zig-zagged east or west,
though we held to a general southern course. The swifts eat flies and
gnats that float on rivers and lakes. They go about fifty miles an hour
—a blinding speed for a small bird—and do not like woods because
while their gaze is fixed downwards in search of insects, they may
break their wings on a tree. They prefer open clear spaces above the
waters and with their scythe-like long wings they cleave the air as
swiftly as an eagle falls on its prey. Think of the precision of the
swift's eye and mouth! While he is whirling over the water he snaps
up flying insects with such ease that the space he traverses is
completely cleared of all the gnats and flies who a few moments
before danced in the sunlight.
"Thus we went over streams, ponds and lagoons. By the way, Mr.
Swift eats his food in a hurry and takes his drink the same way. He
flies over the water, skimming up drops as he goes and swallowing
them at a very high rate of speed. No wonder that he hates to fly in a
place crowded with boughs, larches, and saplings.
"But so much flight in open air has its drawbacks. While a swift is
eating insects with such speed, a sparrow hawk may fall on him from
above. Under these circumstances the swift cannot dip down, for
that would mean death by drowning. I must tell you of one such
attack on my friends. They were busy catching their dinner on a vast
lake one afternoon, and while I was flying about keeping an eye on
the younger swifts, down came a sparrow hawk. I who had
undertaken to look after the children had to act quickly even at the
risk of my own life. Without an instant's hesitation I plunged and
tumbled, inserting my body between the enemy and the young ones.
Well, the sparrow hawk had never expected so much nerve from a
member of the dove family, nor did he calculate my weight. I was at
least five ounces heavier than he. He struck my tail with his talons,
tore a few feathers, and thinking that he had got something he
circled the air for a moment or two. Before he realized that he had
only my feathers, all the swifts were safe, clinging to the bark of a
tree out of anybody's reach. But the small sparrow hawk was so
infuriated that he fell on me with the fury of a large one. However, his
body was very small and his talons smaller, and I knew they could
not pierce my feathers and my skin very far. So I accepted his
challenge and tumbled up. He followed. I shot downwards; he too
dived after. Then I began to rise high. He pursued as before. But
those little hawks fear the upper air, and his wings lagged now. To
my two wing-beats he could make but one. Seeing him hopeless and
tired, I planned to teach him the lesson of his life. No sooner had I
conceived than I executed my plan. I shot downwards. He plunged
after. Down, down, down! The water of the lake rose towards us,
higher and higher every second till it looked no farther than the width
of my wing. Then I flung forward a few inches and struck a warm air
current which helped me upwards. As you know, air warmed in the
hollow places and valleys of mountain country has a tendency to
shoot up into cooler regions. We birds look for these currents to help
us when we have need to make a sudden upward flight. Now I
tumbled three times, and when I looked down I found that sparrow
hawk drowning in the water. He had not been able to reach the air
current. After a considerable ducking, he laboriously flew ashore,
and there under thick leaves hid his disgrace. That instant the swifts
came out of their hiding place and flew southwards.
"The next day we met some wild ducks. They had coloured throats
like mine, but otherwise they were white as snow. They were stream
ducks, whose habit is to float down a mountain brook after fish.
When they have gone far, they rise out of the water and fly back to
their starting place. So they spend the day like shuttles going back
and forth. Their bills were flatter than those of the geese, and they
are dented inside, for once they close on a fish the bills never slip.
They did not seem to care much for the shellfish, but that was
probably because the fish in the lake were so plentiful. The swifts did
not like the place because the ducks' wings beat the air continually
and blew away the insects that normally fly over any water surface.
Still they were glad to see ducks that loved and lived on mountain
torrents, never bothering about the calm water so dear to most
ducks.
"It was these ducks who warned us against the owls and other
murderers of the night which infested those regions. So we did our
best to hide in places too small for owls to go into. It was easy to find
holes in a tree small enough for the swifts, but I decided to stay in
the open and take my chances. Night came on apace. Pretty soon
my eyes could serve me no longer. Darkness within darkness like
layers of black cloth lay upon them. I commended myself to the
Gods of my race and tried to sleep. But who could sleep with those
owls who-whoing about? Terror seized me for the night. Not an hour
passed without some bird's shrieking in pain. The owls, too, hooted
in triumph. Now a starling, then a bulbul (the Indian nightingale)
would cry mortally, and die under the owl's grip. Though my eyes
were shut my ears knew the carnage that went on. A crow shrieked.
Then another, then another. Almost a flock flew up in terror and
smashed themselves against trees. But better that kind of death than
to be killed by the searing and tearing beaks and claws of the owls.
Soon to my utter confusion I smelt weasels in the air and then I felt
that death was at hand. That made me desperate; I opened my eyes
to see. A pale white light was shining on all things. There before me,
about six feet away, was a weasel. I flew up, though that increased
the danger of my being killed by the owls. And sure enough, along
came one hooting and screaming. Two more owls followed. I heard
their wing-beats and by the nature of the sounds I knew that we were
flying over the water, for it echoed back even the slightest shiver of
our feathers. I could not fly in any direction very far, since I saw not
more than six feet at a time, so I waited in the air groping for an air
current that sucked the air of the river up above the boughs that
hung over it. Alas, those owls were on me already, but I tumbled,
then swung into a circle. The owls would not give up the chase. I
rose further up. Now the moonlight like water dripped from my wings.
I could see a little more clearly and that brought me back my
courage. But my enemies did not relent. They too rose, and more
light fell on their eyes, blinding them, though not completely.
Suddenly two of them plunged towards me. Up I flew. The owls
missed—lo! they had fallen on each other. Their claws locked
together, their wings flapping helplessly in the air, they screamed like
fiends and fell among the reeds of the river bank.
"Now I looked about carefully and noticed to my surprise that I had
flown towards the dawning of day and not at the moon. My terror-
stricken eyes had not seen truly. But there were no more owls about;
they had begun to seek for places of hiding from the growing
sunlight. Although I felt safe, I kept away from the prodigious
shadows of the tall trees, for even now an owl might lurk there. I
stayed on a slender branch on a tree-top which caught the first flight
of the sun's arrows, transfiguring it into an umbrella of dancing gold.
Slowly the light spread further down till the white torrent below
trembled with colours like a weasel's eyes.
"Just then on the river bank I saw an appalling sight. Two large
crows, blacker than coal, were jabbing and prodding with their beaks
a helpless blinking owl, caught in the reeds. Now that the sun shone,
it could not open its eyes. Of course the night's slaughter done
amongst the crows was large, and it was the crows' turn to avenge
their wrongs, but I could not bear the sight of two of them killing that
trapped owl. So I flew away from the murderers and went to seek my
friends the swifts. I recounted some of my experiences, and the
parents told me that they had heard terrible cries of distress which
kept them from slumber. Mr. Swift asked if everything was safe
outside, and I thought it was. When we came out, I found that poor
owl lying dead, among the reeds!
"Strange to say, that morning we saw no ducks on the stream.
Apparently they had flown very early in the morning in a southerly
direction, and we decided to do the same. We planned not to seek
the company of other birds going our way. For during the season of
migration, wherever flocks of pigeons, grouse and other birds go,
their enemies such as owls, hawks and eagles go after them. In
order to avoid danger and such shocking sights as we had seen
before, we flew to the east and after going eastwards a whole day,
we rested in the village of Sikkim. The next day we flew south for half
a day and again eastward. That sort of round-about journey took a
long time, but it saved us no end of trouble. Once we were overtaken
by a storm, and were blown into a lake country, and there I saw an
amazing sight. I was on a tree-top, when below me I discerned a lot
of domesticated ducks floating on the water with a fish in each one's
mouth. But none of them swallowed his morsel. I had never seen
ducks resist the temptation to eat fish before, so I called the swifts to
behold the sight. They clung to the barks of several trees and looked
at the ducks, but they could hardly believe their eyes. What was the
matter with them? Pretty soon a boat hove in sight, poled by two
men, flat-faced and yellow. On seeing them the ducks paddled to the
boat as fast as they could go. Reaching it, they hopped up, and then
—can you believe it?—they dropped their capture into a large fish
basket, and jumped down into the lake to fish for some more, and
that went on for at least two hours. Apparently those Tibeto-Burman
fishermen never cast nets. They tied a string tightly, almost to the
choking point, around their ducks' necks, and then brought them to
the lake to catch fish. Whatever the latter caught, they brought to
their human masters. However, when their basket became full, they
undid the strings that were around the ducks' necks who then
plunged into the lake, and gorged themselves on fish.
"Now we flew away far from the lakes for a while in quest of harvest
fields. There the swifts fell on the insects that flew about newly mown
grain, and devoured them. I, too, ate to repletion of the grain, though
not of the insects. While sitting on the fence of a rice field I heard
someone hitting something. It sounded very much like a chaffinch
cracking open a cherry stone with his beak in order to get at its
kernel. (Isn't it strange that a little bird's beak has the power of a
nutcracker?) But, when I wandered nearer the place, under the
fence, whence the noise was coming, I found another bird—a
Himalayan thrush. He was engaged not in cracking cherry stones,
but in hitting a slowly moving snail with his beak. Tick, tack; tick, tack
—tack! He hammered on and on until the snail was stunned into
stillness. The thrush raised his head and looked around, poised
himself on tiptoe, opened his wings, took a quick aim and struck
three more blows—tack, tack, tack! The shell broke open, revealing
a delicious snail. He lifted it up with his beak, which was bleeding
slightly; apparently he had opened his mouth too wide and hurt its
corners. After balancing the snail correctly in his grasp, he flew up
and vanished into a tree where his mate was waiting for supper.
"The rest of our journey through the grain fields of Sikkim was
uneventful. The only thing that is worth remembering was the
trapping of peacocks by men in the forests. These birds come to the
hot southern marshes in quest of food and warmth when the snakes
and other creatures whom they eat go into winter quarters in the
north.
"Peacocks and tigers admire one another. The former like to look at
the tiger's skin and he enjoys the beauty of their plumes. Sometimes
at the water hole a tiger will stand gazing at the plumes of a peacock
on a bough, and the peacock will crane his neck to feast his eyes on
the beauty of the striped skin. Now comes man, the eternal
aggressor, on the scene. For instance, a man one day brought a
piece of cloth painted exactly like a tiger's skin, so that no bird could
tell by looking at it that it was not the striped one himself. Then he
set a noose on a branch of a tree nearby, and slunk away. I could tell
by the odour of the painted cloth that it was not a tiger, but peacocks
have no sense of smell worth speaking of. They are victims of their
own eyes. So in a few hours a pair of peacocks came and began to
gaze at the make-believe tiger from a tree-top, coming lower and
lower. They deceived themselves into the belief that the tiger was
asleep. Emboldened by that illusion, they came very close and stood
on the branch near the trap. It did not take them long to walk into it,
but how they both stepped into a single trap I cannot make out. No
sooner were they caught than they shrieked in despair. Then
appeared the trapper, and played another trick on them. He threw up
two large black canvas caps and lassooed them on each peacock's
head, hiding the poor birds' eyes. Once the eyes are darkened, a
bird never resists much. The man now tied their feet so that they
could not walk; then he set one on each end of his bamboo pole.
Slowly he lifted it by the middle, put it on his shoulder and walked off,
the long tails of the peacocks streaming down like cataracts of
rainbow before and behind him.
"There ends my Odyssey. The next day I said goodbye to the swifts.
They went further south, and I was glad to get home, a wiser and a
sadder bird. Now," demanded Gay-Neck, "tell me this. Why is there
so much killing and inflicting of pain by birds and beasts on one
another? I don't think all of you men hurt each other. Do you? But
birds and beasts do. All that makes me so sad."
PART II
CHAPTER I
 GAY-NECK'S TRAINING FOR WAR
fter we returned to town the air was filled with
the rumours of a coming war somewhere in
Europe. Now that winter was at hand, I decided to
give Gay-Neck such training as would be
necessary in case he was asked to be a carrier for
the British war department. Since he was used to
the climate of the northeastern Himalayas, he
would be an invaluable messenger for the army in any European
country. Even now, with the aid of wireless telegraph and radio, no
army can dispense with the help of carrier pigeons. All that will
become clear to you as the present story unfolds itself.
In training carriers for war work, I followed a plan of my own which
Ghond approved. By the way, the old fellow came all the way to town
with us. He stayed in our house two or three days, then decided to
leave, saying: "The city is unbearable. I never loved any city, but this
one frightens me with its electric tramway and how-aghari (wind
chariot)—the automobile. If I do not shake the dust of this town off
my feet very soon, I shall be nothing better than a coward. A tiger in
the jungle does not frighten me, but I cannot say the same of an
automobile. One crossing of a modern city street imperils more lives
in a minute than a day in the most dangerous forests. Farewell! I go
where the woods wear stillness for a dress, the air is free of odours
and dust, and the sky, a hollowed turquoise, is not cross-cut and
pierced with poles and telegraph wires. Instead of factory whistles I
shall hear the song of birds; and in the place of thieves and gunmen
I shall have innocent tigers and panthers face to face. Farewell!"
But before he left, he helped me to buy about forty more carriers,
and some tumblers. You may ask me the reason of my preference
for these two kinds. I do not know that I have any exclusive love for
tumblers and carriers, but it is true that fantails, pouters and other
pigeons are more ornamental than useful. In our house we had
some of these varieties but they proved so difficult to keep in
company with the carriers and travelers that I finally bestowed all my
appreciation on pure flyers.
In India we have a queer custom that I do not like. If you sell a carrier
no matter at what fabulous price, and it flies away from its new
owner and comes back to you, it becomes your property again and
no matter what the value, you never refund the price. Knowing that
to be the accepted custom among pigeon fanciers, I had to train my
newly acquired pets before anything else to love me. Since I had
paid for them, I did not wish them to return to their former owners. I
did my very best to make them cherish their new home loyally. But
life is practical. I had to begin with the most necessary steps. The
first few weeks I had to tie up their wings in order to keep them
completely within the bounds of our roof. The art of tying a pigeon's
feathers so that he is prevented from flying is delicate. You take a
thread, and pass one end of it over one feather and under the next,
very near its root, all the way until the entire wing is encompassed.
Then you pass the other end of the thread by the same process
under the first, over the second, and so on to the end of the wing,
where the two ends of the thread are tied. It is very much like
darning. It is an utterly painless form of captivity, for though it
prevents a pigeon from flying, yet he is not kept from opening or
flapping his wings. He can stretch them and can massage them with
his beak. After this I used to put my new pigeons at different corners
of the roof so that they might sit still, and with their eyes take in the
colour and quality of their new surroundings. At least fifteen days
should be allowed for this process.
Here I must record a cunning thing that Gay-Neck did when his
wings were tied in the above manner. I sold him early in November
just to see if he would return to me when his wings were freed from
their chain of threads.
Well, two days after purchasing Gay-Neck, his new owner came to
me and said: "Gay-Neck has run away."
"How?" I asked.
"I don't know, but I cannot find him in my house."
"Did you tie his wings? Could he fly?" I asked.
"His wings were tied." He answered.
That struck terror to my soul. I said: "Oh, you brother of a camel and
cousin of an ass, instead of running hither, you should have sought
for him in your own neighbourhood. Do you not see that he tried to
fly, but since his wings were tied, he fell off your roof? And by now he
has been killed and devoured by some cat. Oh, this is a slaughter of
a pigeon. You have robbed mankind of its diadem of carriers! You
have murdered the glory of pigeonhood!" Thus I reproached him.
My words frightened the man so thoroughly that he begged me to
come with him and hunt for Gay-Neck. My first thought was to
rescue the poor fellow from cats. We spent a whole afternoon, but in
vain. I examined more sordid alleyways in twelve hours, expecting to
find him at bay before some mangy cat, than I have done in all the
rest of my life. Alas, he was not to be found. That night I came home
late, for which I got a good scolding, and went to bed a broken-
hearted boy.
My mother, who understood my state of mind, did not wish me to
enter the world of sleep with hurt and excited feelings. She spoke:
"Your pigeon is safe. Go to sleep in a calm mood."
"Why, Mother?"
She answered: "If you are calm, your tranquil thoughts can help you.
If you are peaceful, your serenity will make him serene. And if he is
serene, his mind will work well. And you know, my beloved, how
keen Gay-Neck's mind is. If he sets to work with tranquillity he will
overcome all obstacles and reach home and safety. Now let us make
a prayer to Infinite Compassion, and calm ourselves." So we sat
surrounded by the silence of night for half an hour, saying: "I am
serene. All that exists is serene. Peace, peace, peace be unto all!
Om Shanti, shanti, shanti!"
As I was going to sleep my mother said: "You will now dream no bad
dreams. Now that God's peace and compassion are kindled in you,
you will have a night of fruitful rest. Peace!"
That it proved to be fruitful, there is no doubt. For about eleven in the
morning, Gay-Neck flew up across the sky. He rode high. How he
freed his wings I shall have to tell you in his own language. Let us
again use the grammar of fancy and the dictionary of imagination.
"O, master of many tongues," began Gay-Neck on our own roof, "I
could abide not more than a day in that man's house! He gave me
insect-infected grain to eat, and made me drink water that was not
fresh. After all, I am a soul; why should I be treated as a stone or
shard? Moreover, he tied my wings with evil-smelling fishing tackle.
Would I stay with such an one? Never! So hardly had he put me on
the white roof of his house and gone downstairs, than I flapped my
wings and flew. Alas! my wings were heavy, and it hurt me to fly. So I
fell on the awning of a shop in the lane nearby. There I sat waiting
and watching for help. I saw some swifts go by; I called to them but
they were not my friends. I saw a wild pigeon; I called, but he too
made no response. Just then I beheld a dark cat coming towards
me. Here was death on four feet. As it drew nearer and nearer, its
topaz eyes burnt with red. It crouched and made ready to spring. I,
too, sprang—clear over his head on to the cornice about five feet
above the awning, where a swift had made his home. Though it was
most difficult, I clung to that spot until the black one vanished. Now I
leaped again. Four or five feet above me was the roof. There I
perched. But my wing hurt. In order to ease my pain I massaged the
roots of my feathers. One by one my beak pressed and rubbed
them, and then something slipped. One small feather I had
succeeded in pressing out of the grip of the fishing tackle which
stank exceedingly. I kept on rubbing and pressing the next feather,
and behold it too was free. Oh, what a glorious feeling! Soon the
entire wing was free. Just then the black cat reappeared on the roof,
but now I was able to fly about ten feet and I reached the cornice of
a high building, where I found a convenient perch. Thence I watched
the deadly cat. He crouched and sprang upon the fishing tackle just
shed from my wing. That told me a new story: it was the stench of
the fishing tackle that had attracted him, and not me. Forthwith I
began to bite and press the cord that bound my other wing. By the
time I had freed half the feathers night came on, and when I had
thrown my last evil-smelling chain away from my wing, I was forced