Tubes is rare usage. Tinny is more usual, also refers to small aluminium-hulled boats, so a tinny full of tinnies is occasionally offered as a prize. Most beer here is bottled though, which are called stubbies. Not to be confused with the shorts, that are also stubbies. Or a Darwin stubby, which is about 6 times larger than a stubby. Unless the beer is a tallie, which is the size of two and a half stubbies and is sometimes called a longneck, which aren’t usually the long necked stubbies.
Course, this is only for beer from the bottle shop. If you’re buying a beer in a bar, then you’ve got a different system. A pint’s a pint unless you’re in SA where it’s a schooner and a pint is an imperial pint. But plenty of places don’t sell pints so you buy a schooner, which is also a fifteen in Tassie. But a schooner in SA is a middy so you’ll need to order a pint. Now a middy’s a pot or handle, depending where you are, but those posh Sydneysiders have schmiddys which is more than a pot but less than a schooner, because they’re flash bastards.
Now hold on, Smash, I hear you ask. Suppose I just want a small beer? Well, that’s a glass or a seven but a butcher in Adelaide and about the smallest beer you can get, unless you’re in one of those old bush pubs that still serve ponies to the old-timers, or you’re in the arse-end of Taswegia where a small beer is a foursie or a shetland and not worth bothering with.
The movie I referred to is The Adventures of Barry McKenzie from 1972; I was sure “tubes” would be out of date by now at best but that doesn’t matter to me since it’s completely unfamiliar to everyone in the US
I am definitely a fan of “schooner” as a beer size. That seems like something I could safely ask for if I go to Australia (which I’d like to), right (notwithstanding that I don’t actually understand from what you wrote where that’s actually used)? Probably have to go point percy at the porcelain after a couple of schooners, I imagine.
Pretty safe, as long as you’re not in South Australia, where it shrinks to a half-pint. Not that it matters, because if you’re with locals in SA, they’ll buy you a pint anyway, because you’re not ill.
If you were actually ill, they’d still get you a pint, because it’ll make you feel better. All the glass names are almost irrelevant as there’s really only two sizes, big and small. Tell you what, make it down here and the first one’s on me.
Top movie!
Yep. Mind, Fourex is still dreadful piss but it’s our dreadful piss or something. Doubt anyone could tell the difference in a blind tasting anyway.
I think the term “disorder” works better than “disease” when talking about addiction, not least because disease implies short term treatment and then cure (or death) whereas disorders are understood to be chronic issues to be kept under control as much as possible for a much longer time period.
Ha, yeah, that was the word I was searching for (my thoughts were rather disjointed in that comment as may be obvious), that’s the right one to use (though using that word would imply there is medical/scientific research backing up this idea, which may be why “disease” is regularly used).
