TILTING AT WINDMILLS: A SOBERING THOUGHT

Monday, April 12, 2010

A SOBERING THOUGHT

News reaches me this Monday that in Denmark the brewer Carlsberg has a strike on its hands.

Apparently it wants staff – including the delivery drivers – to reduce the amount of free beer they are allowed to drink at work.

At present the workers are allowed to drink the brewery’s products all day long. Carlsberg wants that restricted to just lunchtimes. The thirsty Danes are having none of it.

Now my alcohol intake is just wine with meals. However I certainly remember through the haze the days of downing four pints of Guinness in the snug of Doheny & Nesbitts in Dublin over a liquid lunch with my media colleagues.

But all day drinking - as part of the job – for free – that is a sobering thought! Especially if a tanker carrying Carlsberg is hurtling towards you down the road.

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TILTING AT WINDMILLS

Sancho Panza is much less learned but a good deal saner than his master.

"At this point they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that are on that plain.

"Fortune," said Don Quixote to his squire, as soon as he had seen them, "is arranging matters for us better than we could have hoped. Look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants rise up, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes. For this is righteous warfare, and it is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth."

"What giants?" said Sancho Panza.

"Those you see there," answered his master, "with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long."

"Look, your worship,'' said Sancho. "What we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the vanes that turned by the wind make the millstone go."

"It is easy to see," replied Don Quixote, "that you are not used to this business of adventures. Those are giants, and if you are afraid, away with you out of here and betake yourself to prayer, while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat."”