From The Bar To Frying Pan

From The Bar To Frying Pan

FPJ BureauUpdated: Saturday, June 01, 2019, 03:46 AM IST
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A dipsomaniac dousing himself with drink is often thought to be drinking like a fish. The expression, “drink like a fish” is said with such utter contempt that the poor fish have got a bad name, although it is not known exactly how much a fish guzzles up its own abode and how inebriated it gets on the aqua pura or brine as the case may be.

Just the same, without any regard to fact, man fancied that to get drunk silly was to drink like a fish. Perhaps deep in the subconscious of the man who first coined that phrase there must have been a lurking desire to give the fish a bad name before frying them, if only to justify his own savagery.

Now report is to hand that when fish drink, and drink like men, they behave in a manner far more dignified than a drunkard ever did. The story comes from Peking where a technician has succeeded in feeding wine to fish so that they may be packed without water and yet arrive at the frying pan alive, and fresh!

This is more than what an ordinary mortal can say for himself after he has had one too many under his belt. If the other fish which nibble at the bait and avoid the hook come to know of the Peking technician’s discovery, they will probably laugh in their sleeves (or is it fins?) and gurgle “Drink like a man and wind up in the frying pan.”

(EDIT, February 24, 1960.)

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