Berwick-on-Tweed plagued by booze cruises

There is more trouble ahead for Berwick-on-Tweed as the Scottish government has again raised the minimum price of alcohol.

As prices in Scotland rise, there are more and more trips across the border to England to pick up booze on the cheap. While the minimum price for a bottle of wine in Scotland is now £6.09, you can pick up a bottle of Three Peasants Artisanal British Wine for a modest £1.99 – and get a free pack of aspirin thrown in for free.

Shop rents in Berwick are rising as more and more off licences are opening – the town now has an offie for every 42 residents. One of the outlets is a drive through – you can order by phone and pick up your plonk in less than 30 minutes. Local people also complain that local favourites like Newkie Brown are being crowded out by shelf after shelf of Buckfast Fortified Wine and 90 Shilling Bitter.

Every Friday evening there is a long line of vans, coaches and pick up trucks on the A1, heading south into Berwick to pick up supplies for the weekend. And on Saturday and Sunday mornings the local A&E is full of Scots who couldn’t wait to get home before getting stuck in.

The local council is planning to ask Westminster for powers to levy its own alcohol tax. A spokesman said 'We don’t want to stop the Scots from coming south. We just want to persuade them to drive to Newcastle for their cheap drink instead.'

The chief executive of Three Peasants has asked us to clarify that 'artisanal' is one word and not two. The fact that his first name is Arti is, he says, just a coincidence.

Image: Stefan - Photography (pexels.com)

Livers 'missing us already'

With Dry January soon to be a thing of the past, livers up and down the country are bracing for a very, very Wet February.  'It's all very well our owners abstaining from alcohol after sobering up on the 4th or 5th of January, but it inevitably leads to trepidation in the liver world,' said a spokes-liver today. 

'At first it is rather nice to only have to filtrate tea and coffee, to purify relatively clean blood etc, but to be fair it gets a little humdrum for those of us used to battling constantly seven nights a week against the hard stuff.  Then there is the deconditioning - by the end of the Christmas break we're Premier League match fit, but by the start of February we start getting palpitations thinking about the first slug of the evening, or afternoon, or breakfast as some Wetherspoon regulars call it.

'Then some of us start to get nervous, feeling fear as the day approaches.  Some doctors diagnose this at the DTs, as if it is withdrawal, but it's a mix of under-confidence mixed with excitement - will it be a low ABV beer or a full throttle whisky?  Cocktails, shots, a bottle of red or a swift half followed by a snifter.  Or maybe all of the above mixed in a two-pint jug and sunk in one gulp,' said the spokes-liver with its liver-fingers crossed.

'You'll have to excuse me,' the spokes-liver said, 'I've just learned that I'm twice the size of a normal liver.  That's good news for my human, because he does like to drink rather a lot.'

Photo by Amie Johnson on Unsplash

Overheard in the pub