Hardeep Singh Kohli: We need to grow up about our boozing

There's a wee patch of grass in Glasgow, a bit of scrubland and some bushes down at the bottom of Buccleuch Street at the Charing Cross end. There's also a broken bench, a urine-stained telephone box and the odd bit of strewn pornography.

Although it was only moments from the busiest junction in the city, the concrete and metal of the motorway conspired with the bushes to offer some privacy to us as 13-year-olds. That was where we used to drink our cider and lager, procured by yours truly, since I was the biggest and most physically mature of my gang – and the turban threw the staff at Eadie Cairns off-licence down near Central Station.

That was where we got hammered before taking ourselves and our best clothes up to the school disco. This is where I learned the term shotgunning, a bizarre practice involving the shaking up of a can of beer before puncturing it with a compass (we were schoolboys after all) and allowing the agitated alcohol to shoot straight down our throats and into our systems. I was assured by my comrades that this got you pissed much quicker. After all, that was the point of drinking, wasn't it?
I don't know what it was about growing up in Glasgow but public drinking was never really outlawed or frowned upon. I have seen a little of the world. I have travelled North America, vast areas of Asia and India and quite a lot of Europe. I have rarely seen folk in those countries drinking in public. Admittedly, I have seen drunks across the world, all of whom seem to love the rest of humankind while trying hard to consume carbohydrates. But very rarely have I witnessed a culture of public drinking.

Boris Johnson, the new London mayor, is promising a crackdown on boozing in public, especially on public transport, an idea I believe other cities should copy. We have a dysfunctional relationship with alcohol, across all of Britain and in Scotland particularly. Statistics show that Scots are likely to drink significantly more than their English counterparts. The facts are shocking. In Paisley, children as young as 10, paralytic. Our Government in Holyrood is spending £25m, more than twice as much as last year, tackling what they describe as "our complex relationship with drink". And a 60% rise in violent crimes by Scottish women is being blamed on their increased indulgence on alcohol.

Maybe it's time we started cleaning up our streets. These days, with my shotgunning days far behind me, I don't understand why we tolerate drinking in public. In some British cities in the summer months the urban centres look like crisis areas with paramedics pitching tents to deal with the predictable numbers of injured and battle-scarred drunks. Is this really how a civilised society should be running itself?
So much has been done to change the way smokers live in Scotland yet we seem to want to stand idly by and let alcohol blight where we live. Why is it such a terrible idea to stop selling drink to those under the age of 21? There are those that claim it will push drinking and under-age drinking underground; even if that were to happen it would be only be a minority. Maybe it's better to protect the majority and then try to deal with the minority.

Deep-rooted societal problems need bold and challenging solutions. If that means us all as a society having to change our relationship with alcohol then maybe that is exactly what we need to do. Perhaps the multi-buy offers need to end, the buy-one-get-one-free and the 25% extra all need to go. And why should posh, middle-class folk be treated any differently from superlager-drinking down-and-outs? If we are to change dysfunction with alcohol then we need to do so at every strata of society. Some might even argue that brie-reeking drunk middle-class people are even more offensive than cider swilling school kids.

There are depressing social reasons why our kids feel the need to go out and get absolutely hammered from such tender ages. Wouldn't it be cheaper and more effective to try to deal with the reasons why people feel the need to get drunk rather than spend our precious public money on cleaning up after them? I realise that the measures I advocate would have scuppered my own childhood drinking experience. The difference is that when I did what I did it was once in a blue moon – and I paid a heavy price for it, namely suspension from school and a week at the library on Sinclair Drive as punishment. Kids today are weekly drinkers, some even daily imbibers. I'd be willing to sacrifice teenage binges for the greater good.

Man enough to be tickled by pink

Can anyone remember when the colour pink became the sole domain of females? On Thursday last week I left the flat in a hurry, my mind in a million different places. But it certainly wasn't on the clothing I had thrown on. I caught myself in a window on my way to the bus and realised that I was an homage, head to toe, to the colour lilac. Lilac turban, pinkish sweatshirt and off-lilac slacks. Where it not for my white trainers I truly would have been a walking, talking advert for lilac life.

It led me to wonder why the colour is such a controversial choice for a man. When did girls and ladies manage to snaffle the lilac end of the spectrum? I'm not a great fan of blue so was never likely to express my masculinity through anything navy. Isn't it about time we broke down the barriers about colour prejudice and allowed all people to enjoy all colours? Especially lilac. Go on, you know you want to.

Tooth or dare

Floss is a great word. Candy floss, the tooth-decaying, sugary sweet fairground treat. And dental floss, the nylon filament used to protect teeth from tooth decay. Isn't language wonderful?

Little Miss Sunshine – a seasonal treat

Some strange alchemy occurs when the sun comes out. The girls get better looking. Now, I wish to be clear at this point and record my belief that women are great. All of them. They should be afforded every available equality and be allowed to reach their full potential as human beings.

Having said that, I am, after all, a man, and it is well documented within the job description of a man that he is to find women attractive. (Unless he is a gay in which case they have a different contractual arrangement.) Men are meant to look at women and women are meant to be admired: it's fundamental to the evolutionary principle. It is by no means a denigration of women to find them pleasant to look at.

Right. So, having established my firmly-held belief in gender equality, my question still remains. Where do all these lovely sun-kissed females come from? Just days ago in the dank, dark rain of a wet April they were nowhere to be seen, anonymous and hidden. Now the blue skies seem to attract them from their hiding places and they sashay down the high streets of our land looking simply lovely. And when the taciturn sun chooses to leave, with it will go these lovely ladies. I'm missing them already.