Slán to ramping up substantial meals in new normal wet pubs!

Bradley Bytes – a sort of political column with Dara Bradley

Of all the things 2020 will be remembered for, bad language will be low on the list. But wouldn’t it be great all the same to consign to the dustbin of history certain words and phrases that plagued us during last year?

‘Ramp up’ is one of those terms that’d make your blood boil. That’s partly because the people using it – mostly politicians and health chiefs – didn’t ramp up the things that they said they were going to. Or certainly not as quickly as we’d have liked.

They were ramping up test-and-tracing, ramping up bed capacity and the vaccination roll-out, and ramping up this, that and the other.

What happened to increase, as in, increasing such and such a thing?

Now, some of you might argue, get over it. Ramp up is the new normal. And you’d be wrong. In fact, the only time it should be acceptable to use the term ramp up is in connection with new normal. We’ll call it the new normal exception to the ramp-up rule.

As in, you are allowed to ramp up the physical violence you inflict on someone who continues to use the term ‘new normal’. Stop it. There is no such thing as a new normal.

Nothing is normal about this pandemic. Lockdowns and not hugging and isolation and excessive hand-washing and mask-wearing and being socially distant and so on and so forth is not normal. It’s no longer new either. So, let’s stop calling it what it’s not.

Like wet pubs. Wet pubs were always just pubs until the Coronavirus came along. Now they’re all shut. Is the opposite of a wet pub a dry pub, as in a pub that’s dull and boring?

Of course, in order to distinguish between pubs serving a substantial meal – another god-awful term that needs to go – someone came up with the term ‘wet pub’. Clearly, someone who doesn’t frequent pubs of any description, wet or dry. And yes, ‘wet pubs’ fits better in headlines than ‘pubs that serve food’ but stop it, please.

As a New Year’s resolution, let’s say slán in 2021 to the ramping up of substantial meals in new-normal wet pubs.
For more Bradley Bytes, see this week’s Galway City Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.