Amuse bouche... Mid-Lent pints

Derek wondered if a sneaky pint would hurt anyone. Like, if no one knew, then what harm? It was three weeks into his alcohol-free Lent and Derek really fancied a pint. Nearly three weeks. Felt like five.

A nice, Sunday-evening pint in the pub with the newspaper. Derek’s mouth watered at the thought. But he couldn’t have it in the local pub. He’d be bound to meet someone there he knew, and they’d call him on the pint-drinking. It was probably a pity he’d told all and sundry he was giving up the pints for Lent, otherwise he might have got away with it.

Derek wondered if this fierce, fierce longing for a pint was a sign that he had a drink problem. Was it wrong to want a beer so badly? Surely not if it was just the one beer. Like, if he wanted a feed of them, that’d be different. He only wanted one. OK, maybe two. Birds and wings, and all that.

Birds. He missed birds the last few weeks, too. Not that Derek would call any woman a bird these days. Still, without the beer, he had no real interest in going out-out, and when he wasn’t on the beer or going out-out, Derek wasn’t going to be chatting up anyone. Mortifying.

Derek was a confident guy, everyone said so, and great with the old banter, but it didn’t flow without a few inside you.

There’d be none of that till Lent was over — the splitsecond Lent was over — but that wasn’t the kind of buzz Derek was after today. Today, Derek just wanted a relaxing pint. And who would really mind if he had one?

Well, God might mind, Derek thought, even though he gave God little thought in general.

Really, when he worried that God would know about the one lovely, creamy pint, Derek meant that his mother would somehow know. His mother and God were very close, interchangeable moral guides and symbiotic scolding presences in Derek’s life.

No matter how much he imagined himself an adult, Derek’s mother could still sense when he’d done something wrong, something that offended not just her, but God himself. They’d know if he had a pint.

Derek wished he’d given up sweets instead for Lent, instead of the gargle. Sweets were easy. Even when he was a kid, Derek never dipped into his Roses tin of accumulating treats, even when each of his brothers had succumbed. Derek had willpower. Derek was made of sterner stuff. Derek could last to the end of Lent.

But then, Derek had never really been a fan of sweets. A quick sugar rush and then a headache was not Derek’s idea of a good time. Not like a pint. Just one pint. God, Derek would love a pint.