The Dangers of a Good Cocktail

Hello Oliver Rawlings followers. I’m coming back to work after a weekend that saw me drink more than my fair share of cocktails and as you could probably guess, I’m feeling a little worse for wear. To be honest, even in my office alone, I’m hardly the only one. I walked in this morning to be greeted by a sea of miserable faces and pale complexions; however the show, so to speak, must go on, and I guess I’ll just have to power through and drink a lot of coffee.

Skittles make me angry!!! Rawwr!

I blame this all squarely on the new cocktail I tried this weekend. Known as the ‘Skittle’, I’m not entirely sure what it had in it, but it was a luminous green and tasted of skittles. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, and folks, it really was. I also discovered the lager cocktail, yes folks, you heard me right, the lager cocktail. It was called the flaming Doctor Pepper and was comprised of Amaretto, Vodka and Lager. You wouldn’t think so, but it went down a treat (as evidenced by the next day’s epic hangover). Now as I’m regretting everything and thinking about how it’s all the cocktails fault, I’m asking myself, what is it about the cocktail that makes it so appealing?

It’s time for a history lesson now. The cocktail, at least as we know it, was devised by bartenders in the 1920’s to promote alcohol to women. At that point, alcohol was thought to be the province of men. However, the 1920’s, which was a time of technological evolution and economic growth, saw women, for the first time, venturing out to bars and clubs and there was a growing market that alcohol professionals knew they had to tap  into. They did, and the cocktail was born. It has since gone from strength to strength, with the invention of such classic drinks as the Mojito, Sex on the Beach, Sidecar and many, many more, which have contributed to cocktails growing to become a billion dollar industry.

So, now we know that cocktails were created to appeal originally to women, we have to ask ourselves how this happened. The idea was that back then, it was thought that women couldn’t handle the harsh  bite of alcohol (sexism rears its ugly head),so it was thought that adding elements such as fruit juice and mixing two different types of alcohol together could produce a drink with a  sweeter, milder taste. It obviously worked, and more successfully than ever imagined, since it came to appeal to a centuries worth of alcohol drinkers.

At the end of the day, I may be moaning but it was a fantastic weekend, and it’ always good to try something new. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time; a cocktail may be more enticing than ever, but we’re all adults, we can make our own decisions, and we are responsible enough to live with the consequences. That’s why they invented coffee!

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Oliver Rawlings on Why the Smartphone Changed his Life

Hello Oliver Rawlings readers! Do you remember the days of the flip phone, pay as you go and ‘Snake’? I do; like everyone else who’s just entering adulthood, I grew up in a world where the mobile phone came to dominate the hearts and minds of kids everywhere. We’ve grown, developed and changed right along with our phones. Society graduated from the brick phones of 90’s TV shows, to the smaller models to the flip phone and finally to the Smartphone.

Picard uses Android!

I’ll admit, when I first heard about phones such as the Blackberry and the IPhone, I was just as sceptical as everyone else. After all, my phone could make calls, my phone could text, I could play games on my phone and it even had a camera. Like the majority of us, I started to look down on the celebrities and public personalities who started promoting the smartphone in their masses and seemed to take it with them everywhere. It got to the point where you couldn’t open a magazine or internet tab without being greeted with a picture of a celeb clutching their Blackberry in one hand and a Starbucks in the other, consumed in their little hand held device.

However, as my friends and family gradually succumbed to the seduction of the Smartphone, I couldn’t resist the allure forever. Yes friends, I forsook my derision and went and got myself my very own smartphone. Now, it wasn’t quite as sophisticated as the ones we have now, but it quickly sucked me in and opened me up to all the possibilities this one little piece of technology could bring into my life. I’ve never been the same since.

The biggest change to my life had to be the smartphones introduction of 3G internet into my life. Like anyone my age, like all of you out there, I grew up with the internet, I grew up learning just how valuable it can be to live your daily life with the internet there to help you. Although the smartphone made it evolve to the next level. Now I use the Google maps app whenever I get lost (I get lost a lot!) I use the Twitter app to talk to people, I use Snapchat to snap an amusing pic and give people a laugh. I do online banking on my phone, I post pictures to my Facebook profile on my phone, I even use it to check when the next bus is due; it’s just that amazing.

I may sound like a hypocrite, but I bet you can all relate. In 2013 the whole world has caught on to the smartphone craze. The next time you catch a train, have a little look around and observe how many people are looking down at their phones, not even making a call. It makes me wonder how the smartphone will change the way we live our lives and interact with each other. Is the smartphone as big a cultural advancement as it is a technological one? Only time will tell but I have a sneaky suspicion that the answer to that question just might be yes.

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