During our local 3 day session event, many of us will have been drinking from about 12pm until about 3am and sometimes some of us (and I am one of them) have got so drunk that we can no longer play but (I hope I'm not tempting fate here) sing 1987 when I started attending I can not rebember any trouble amongst the musicains even if some us have occasionaly had far too much we still manage to be quite and listen to others etc.

There was spot of bother in this period that I missed and I believed that one was quickly sorted out. This involved a couple of people gate crashing a party (ie they had nothing to do with the music not even listening) and when the host told them that they weren't welcome, one of them took a swing. I don't know the person in quetstion but apparantly on of our visiting players from Manchester was quite handy with his fist stepped in and knocked the offender clean out with one blow!

In my exeperience, the drink related problems have nearly always been caused by outsiders rather than the players. I do a semi session (any player is welcome to join in if they are brave enough) semi pub entertainment thing on a Sunday night. I am very tolerent (and in this environment customers shouting etc. is something that you expect and put up with) but this year, I have twice had to approach that landlord and got 2 people barred from the pub. One of them wanted a fight with me because I refused to do The Fields of Athenrye for the third time and the other one sat down next to me and reached accross me, picked up my pint of Guinness and started to drink it - it was not an accident.

Jon