It is nowadays hard to keep one’s mind off alcohol. Of course, I don’t mean in the private sense, that as one grows older, midday and 5 p.m. seem each day to arrive a little later on the clock; nothing whatever to do with one’s own harmless and soothing glass of red with dinner. No. I mean alcohol in its civic sense, impinging on law enforcement, health and public corruption. How can alcohol ever be far from one’s thoughts, when each day’s news reminds us of the childish political manoeuvres in Canberra over “alcopops”? Or (in Melbourne) how the Brumby…