Cider with posing

Apparently, it's acceptable to drink cider again.

By "acceptable" I mean drink it in public. By "public" I mean order it in a bar or pub. For a certain section of the community, cider never really went away. Bikers...people from the West Country.....tramps.

It's a sort of gateway drink; you have it at a couple of house parties and either learn to put up with it, or get horribly, awfully sick on it and never touch the stuff again. The only time I've ever been properly apprehended by the police was at sixteen, drinking Merrydown and smoking spliffs with the homeless in the town where I went to school. As a fully paid-up (well, by giro) member of the hedge-monkey, living-in-a-lorry, dog-on-a-string set in the early nineties, I was more than happy to order a pint of Scrumpy Jack* in the pub. At bike rallies, it was pretty much compulsory. I once astonished a lovely member of the Hells Angels at Kent Custom Bike Show by getting through a whole two-litre flagon of their "special" scrumpy (warm, flat, with spiders floating in it) and going back for more. On the same day. Me and cider have always been easy company.

But, you know, times change. You get older, stop dying your hair pink, get an office job. Suddenly cider isn't the sort of thing you ask for at the bar any more. You switch to shorts, or wine or (like me) pints of strong Belgian lager instead (for some reason Wifebeater=ok, White Lightning=not). And so it goes on. Cider, unless you are into medieval re-enactment or live in Somerset, is the preserve of the sort of person who is happy to spend the day sitting on the bench outside the library drinking from a blue plastic bottle and shouting at people who aren't there.

And then it all changed again. Suddenly, cider isn't just acceptable - it's cool. Forget chardonnay, and ironic alcopops. No, if you want to be the epitome of effortless style, simply order a pint of tramp juice. As long as you pour it over ice, it's fine. Really. Nobody will think you are a homeless, or an alcoholic, or a student. No - people will clamour to be your friend, to move in the circles you do...to drink cider.

I don't get it.

I mean, it's still basically the same socially unacceptable drink, right? You still see men in dirty trousers carrying it home from the offy, the two-litre bottle rustling seductively in a translucent stripey carrier bag, don't you? So why, because a man from a marketing agency tells you that the addition of a couple of ice cubes elevates it to the apple-based equivalent of Cristal, are you suddenly convinced** that it's the only drink to be seen with? I mean, it tastes like Top Deck and makes your teeth furry.

I find it slightly annoying, that's all. I never said I was going to be rational when I started this thing.

* More than likely a pint of snakebite, made with Scrumpy and Holsten Export. Happy, if blurry days.

** If you drink it on the sundeck of a cruise ship it's ok though. This is the only exception. Do not question it.