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Monday, 26 May 2014

E-cigs are out!


Well some kind person (or perhaps sadist!) has brought to our attention the fact that it's that time of year again ….. the Road to Recovery (cult) group Plymouth celebrating yet another year of dumping its message onto the - by now - very long suffering alcoholic. Can you imagine it? Twenty years of sitting through ….. and having to listen to …... what would Wayne call it? Crap! Yep! That's the word we were looking for. Well the ordeal itself lasted 71 minutes and 36 seconds (at least according to the length of the audio file recording this momentous event). Now we'd like to say we're the kind of fellas that'll go to any lengths, that 'half measures avail us not at all' etc but when it comes to listening to clone speak we're afraid all such noble sentiments quite abandon us, and we're reduced to a mere gaggle of 'shivering denizens'. In fact, if truth be told, we only managed to stick out the first ten minutes of this 'performance'. Luckily for us (or maybe not) the first speaker was none other than the local guru (or is it ex-guru?) Wayne P. From the context it sounded like he'd been dragged out of retirement to address the huddled masses. The prologue to the whole thing was delivered with characteristic Roadie efficiency albeit lacking rather the élan one would normally expect at the commencement of the latest drama to unfold at this popular cult venue. The secretary proceeded through the usual announcements with some occasional references to the traditions (although we have no idea why – this is not a group that pays too much attention to them). But our ears did prick up at the mention of an entirely novel prohibition: e-cigs (hence the title of today's post). Apparently one is exhorted not to light up one of these during the course of the proceedings (can you 'light up' an e-ciggy?). Naturally we looked up the relevant information on the subject (see above) but could find nothing to indicate why this should be the case e.g. no mention of passive 'electronic' smoking etc. We can only conclude that given a couple of fairly recent reports of these things going whizz bang (albeit in unusual circumstances) the secretary was keen to avoid such goings-on during Wayne's (et al) peroration. But by now it was time for the Great Pretender to do his piece although unfortunately from his 'performance' it does seem Wayne has somewhat lost his edge. During his allocated slot on stage he managed to mention sponsor/sponsorship only seven times which is well below his usual one-a- minute average. On the other hand God, Higher Power etc got 'nul' points with “spiritual” scoring only two. But no one was left in any doubt as to who played the role of Higher Power in this group! (we'll give you a clue – it begins with 's' and ends with 'r' and the word is 7 letters long!). Wayne rambled on for the designated time but seemed quite unable to inject any kind of originality into whatever 'Godless' message he was trying to communicate. In the end it amounted to just a series of standard cult slogans strung together in a kind of half-hearted fashion. The word “tedious” we think was repeated on at least a couple of occasions and 'tedious' would be about the most apposite way of describing this particular performance. However he did wander at one point in his monologue (rather dangerously we thought) into references to past misdemeanours in his drinking days as he contrasted these with his own present, rather splendid, sobriety ie. cheating on girlfriends, a defect of character which unfortunately his Higher Power (ie. Wayne) is finding harder than most to remove! Ah well! Business as usual! Words and no action has always been the cult way!

Cheerio

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

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