>>8274
There are apprentices past retirement age.

>>8273

Not really. People have the same worry about going to university in later life, but mature applicants are generally well received because they've got a bit of life experience and a bit of common sense. Loads of people change careers midway through their life, either through choice or because the job they trained for no longer exists.

Some apprenticeship providers just want a source of cheap labour and would rather choose a wet-behind-the-ears teenager who won't complain, but you probably don't want to be working for pricks like that. If you were an electrician or a plumber, would you rather work alongside a teenage lad who can barely get out of bed in the morning or a fully grown adult?

>>8273

In my workplace, there are two Apprentices aged 28 and 39 respectively. There's only one other person in the department younger than that, though. Our two apprentices are perfectly capable of doing their work like any other employer, but they have no formal qualifications that would let them get a foot in the door for promotions, so they're working through coursework for NVQs and other such certifications. It helps that the organisation is full of other people who are constantly learning, so it's considered to be normal, even encouraged.

Back on it tonight after years away. Feels like coming home, just like it always does.

>>8328

That you, Jeremy?

>>8328
Well, high as a kite. Too drunk to shoot, so stuck sat here.

That's it.

THAT'S IT.

Shaitan really loves to weave his twisted web of pernicious poisons and perils in the holiday season.

>>8332
Roll up your trouser legs and think of Medina, ladm8.

>>8332

What a waste of a restricted brain.

Only got drunk twice so far this month.
Lost almost 5kg in the first two weeks. Think I may have done some (semi?)permanent damage, I definitely don't function mentally as well as I used to.

Lads... I sit on a throne of lies but I (just in time) filed my tax return. Apparently HMRC owes me a grand, but all in all I "earned" roughly 200k 5.April 2018-2019. Most of it in RSUs (yes, that one) but fuck me. 0T crowd, I guess.

I get a special 9p discount on my can's of Dębowe Mocne from the cornershop, so that's a... win? No, a disturbing development. I'm trapped, the corner shop knows me, the Sainsbury's knows me, the Tesco knows me (I meet the same self-checkout guys every week), I can't go anywhere they don't just knowingly ring me up or hit the "over 25" button. Sure, I'm getting old, but for once...

All this to say, income doesn't even matter anymore. What am I going to do with it? Sit in a cheap rented place and buy my booze without JSA? I'll ride the wave while I can (don't get me wrong, I walk past the people who didn't have my luck in life every day)?

Fuck knows what it all means.

>>8337

One of the things I did dislike when I moved out of That London was that my list of available booze shops shrunk down rapidly. I'm surprised the local co-op didn't run an intervention on me the number of times I was in there a day. I also got to know the bloke who ran the self check-outs at the 24 hour Tesco. I feel your pain.

Got so drunk yesterday that I left a trail of vomit trying to make it to the pub bathroom. Time to call it quits for a while.

>>2130
How are you guys holding up? Did corona interrrupt your regular booze run?

>>8342

I got my litre of blended Scotch, right on schedule and I will have an empty 1 litre Scotch bottle by tomorrow afternoon.

>>8343

>tomorrow afternoon

I see you're only an amateur resting actor.

>>8344

I've lapsed due to having a job which has inadvertently put me into this fancy new "Key Worker" group thing. I might have to go in on sunday despite being a Corporate NHSLad, just to assist the Clinical Practice Educators in training up all the new Thespians.

Working from home + social isolation has me back on a full wino routine until the local supermarkets run out. Once the gyms shut that was it for me. No distractions and physical wellbeing meant the end of my willpower.

Good luck coronacunt, my liver will pack up well before you get me.

I was doing so, so well too.

>>8346
Make a home calisthenics routine. It's not the same but can tide you over.

You're in luck, lads. Offies are added to the list of essential businesses.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52033260

>>8349

Told you all in the other thread, lads. Fuck bread and circus, the government knows this country runs on white cider and love island.

>>8350
It is a pretty good way of containing civil unrest, to be fair.

I wonder how the Chinese deal with it? How are the smokers coping? The few videos I saw seemed like there was no bugger leaving the blocks at all, they certainly weren't all fucking off up the Wuhan equivalent of Snowdonia. Chinalad, you there?

>>8351
>It is a pretty good way of containing civil unrest, to be fair.
Allowing everyone to get pissed and expecting them to maintain quarantine?

>>8352

It's a lot easier to stay on the couch watching shite with a blood alcohol percentage just this side of dead.

>>8351

You can get fags delivered in China.

>>8354

I thought you could here? There used to be booze-and-fags delivery places on HungryHouse that were open until 4am and charged exorbitant prices. Granted I gave up drinking in 2017 so maybe they've been banned since.

>>8351

They were welding people's doors shut in China so I imagine that helped.

>>8356

To be fair, if someone could weld me in on my tod with 500 bottles of vodka and not turn my water off until it's over I'd be stoked.

>>8355
You can definitely still get booze delivered (for about twice as much as an offie or supermarket charges). There's a 24/7 cornershop near me so it's never been tempting until now.

I am running low. All I got is a half rum. I felt bad, but then I realised, I am happy when I drink. So I started again. I blame corona.

All I am missing is a hooker, but they don't wanna come out any longer. Sad state of affairs.

Yesterday I was trying to buy supplies on Uber-Eats because ordinary shops (off-licences) are on there now. Ended up buying a couple of cases of bottled Stella. Back when I drank regularly (daily) I used to be one of those tossers who refuses to drink beer out of a bottle but fuck it.

Today I ordered another case and a six-pack of polish lager (in the much superior canned form). Don't want to start on the voddy just yet because I'll probably die.

It's funny because my tolerance is so fucking low now. I'd been dry for like a year with only a tiny slip here or there. I was so drunk I whatsapped my parents to announce that I had grown a moustache and telling them to "deal with it mothers and motherfuckers!!!!".

I swear my behaviour wasn't quite this cringe in the good old days.

>>8360
Nice work, they'll be planning your intervention now.

What's wrong with bottles?

>>8361
>Nice work, they'll be planning your intervention now.
Been there done that.

>What's wrong with bottles?
Nothing, objectively. I just had my first few proper piss-ups sitting on this ratty old sofa out of a skip in my uncle's (who isn't really an uncle) mechanic's garage. I suppose I took on some 'toxic masculinity' with regards to what a man does and doesn't drink. Exactly around the time I started boozing there was a kind of neo-yuppie movement and I associated bottles of beer with that (also, very strongly, with Hollyoaks of all things). Cans were for chilling with your pals, pints were for when you're out on the town, bottles were for other people.

>>8361
> What's wrong with bottles?

Not him but to me there's always been something about the grimy aesthetic of drinking tins that felt it like was best suited to those foul and sweaty midnight binges as you stoically pound can after grim-faced can while staring at a telly long set to mute and go over and over the same three memories with increasing bitterness.

Drinking out of an actual bottle, or - god forbid - a glass, feels me about as unassailably futile as pretending there's glamour and candelabra when you're drinking by candlelight.

>>8363
Booze out of a ceramic mug is my one. Takes me right back to smoking soap bar in doley flats and drinking whatever dodgy nicked vodka we could get our hands on.

>>8364

Reminds me of John Doran's mug-martinis.

https://www.vice.com/da/article/8g7w9a/they-rode-over-peasants-like-you

>>8365
What are you doing in Danish Vice?

>>8366

I suppose the bigger question is why is Danish vice in English? It was just the first result when I googled the name of the article and the author, buggered if I know.

Happy 10 years, thread!

>>8368
Jesus.

I didn't change for the better at all.

Feeling suicidal now. Jesus.

A decade of boozefa.gs.

Re-reading this thread I wonder how >>5231 is getting on.

>>8365

The patron saint of degenerates. Everyone in this thread needs to read his book Jolly Lad. You can get the audiobook for nowt with an Audible trial and I can't recommend it highly enough.

"This is not a 'my drink and drug hell' kind of book for several reasons - the main one being that I had, for the most part, had a really good time drinking. True, a handful of pretty appalling things have happened to me and some people that I know or used to know over the years. But I have, for the most part, left them out of this book as they are not illuminating, not edifying and in some cases concern other people who aren't here to consent to their appearance. Instead this book concentrates on what you face after the drink and the drugs have gone."

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jolly-Lad-A-Menk-Anthology/dp/B01C7UC0EE/

Ask not for whom that bell doth toll
As wordy barmaids eyes do roll,
A landlord with an earnest shout
Calls time on drinks and ushers out.

The dutiful sip-up and leave,
But he's a last card up his sleeve,
With feet like land-locked deep sea diver,
Shuffles barwards with a fiver,
He begs at last for just one more,
"And one yourself, just make it right."

He promises to drink it quick
Yet deep down knows he's feeling sick,
Not from stout or bags of scratchings
More from questions booze keeps asking,
What happened to the happy me?
I think - no, hang on - need to pee.

In the bog the poet sways
Poised to ponder fonder days
Before the time of cheap warm cider,
Eyes of wonder opening wider.

Now they narrow, tired of fun
As fart turns wet and burns the bum,
Yet rarest smile pops in his head
Till urine runs down inside leg,

And thus the landlord shows him out
The child inside is crying out
"I was not meant for such sweet sorrow"
But opts instead for "See ya tomorrow".

Thou stout-soaked, cig-stained feckless soul
Is what for, not who, that bell did toll.

---

Ten years, lads. I became an alkie around the time this thread first started. I lost everything, including the love of my life, and nearly died from DTs. Now I've been sober for over two years, have a girlfriend, a good job and my own place. If I can make it so can you. Best of luck.

>>8372

His book and the original source material for it (his Menk column for Vice, which is now mostly offline but you can find the full set via the wayback machine) are both fucking brilliant and required reading for anyone who drinks or drugs too much or used to.

>>8372

>the redemption offered by fatherhood

I'm probably more adept at climbing a tree than somebody like you, not one of those. I thought he really was one of the good ones too.

This is the worst thing about getting old. One by one everyone succumbs to the belief you can respawn and have a do-over by making some poor bint carry your progeny, and making sure it lives better than you.

None of them are ever yet old enough or wise enough to realise that's probably what their own dad thought too.

>>8375
Ah, thanks. That's getting removed from the wishlist.

>>8375

I'm a staunch anti-natalist and as such feel that bringing a child into the world always causes net harm, but can you really not see the point of view that one might be able to make up for forty years of being a cunt by being a decent dad? I don't agree with him, but I can see his point of view.

> None of them are ever yet old enough or wise enough to realise that's probably what their own dad thought too.

I'm 100% certain that my dad had me because he was an irresponsible cunt and condoms are no fun.

>>8375

He's not cunty about it.

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/nnq7ng/gone-daddy-gone-menk-john-doran

>>8378

I actually don't remember anything preachy or holier than thou about being a father in either his book or his column. Also despite the disclaimer that the book is about "what you face after the drink and the drugs have gone", the majority of the book is about his time on the booze.