Happy drunks

Danes love booze. Seriously. I thought Aussies were good guzzlers until I came here. It’s not uncommon to see people wandering the streets drinking beer first thing in the morning and you can buy liquor from any supermarket, although you have next to no hope of finding Aspirin or Panodil.

Anyway, I digress. In Melbourne at the moment, quickly rivalling Johannesburg in terms of street violence, there’s pandemonium about binge drinking youths picking fights and bashing each other to death at nightclubs.

I’m sure there’re booze-inspired punch ups here in Denmark too (I’ve been told Aalborg is good for a fight, if that’s what you’re looking for) but what I’ve noticed here is that groups of merry young-ins also seem to sing – at the top of their voices – late at night while they meander home. I used to will them to shut up but I’ve become quite used to it and, when you think about it, it’s far more preferable than beating each other up.

Last night was almost a concert performance. A boisterous group made their way along our street singing a song from that Whoopi Goldberg film, Sister Act, where she finds herself in a down-and-out school and miraculously transforms a class of dead-beats into and American equivalent of the Vienna Boys’ Choir.

So there I was, sitting watching a British crime show when they started up. ‘La, la, la, laaa!’ a few of them belted out, while they took turns doing shouting the next ‘La’ bit in the lead up to ‘Oh Happy Day’. They were really very good, especially considering they were pretty drunk.

Now that would never happen in Melbourne on a Saturday night, unfortunately.

The downside to the concert is I will have to dodge the usual selection of Sunday morning ‘pavement pizzas’ when I walk the dog. Hamish loves them and thinks they’re there just for him and can’t quite understand why I don’t let him eat them.