Hangover has made me think again
IT’S well and truly over. That special day where you start drinking in the morning and don’t stop until you can’t speak or stand.
Saturday.
The hangover that followed the festivities has made my wife and I reevaluate our drinking habits.
After spilling red wine down my shirt, I’m definitely not guzzling red wine straight from the plastic tap on those bottles. I’ll probably knock Guinness and creme de menthe chasers on the head, too.
The Better half even suggested I contact BUPA to assess the damage that caused by years of drinking to excess – I’ll drink to anything, me – has caused my abused liver.
I did the exact opposite. I contacted APUB. That’s because I’m old school: from a time when ‘binge drinking’ was simply getting bladdered.
I will not fall prey to the Government’s scaremongering. Admittedly, I read a Daily Mail article on the perils of alcohol and pledged there and then to stop reading.
In an attempt to purge our bodies of booze, my wife, who enjoys the odd vat of wine with cheese and biscuits, pledged our support to ‘Dryathlon’ – a commitment to stay alcohol free throughout January, with cash raised going to charity.
“Let’s get this right,” laughed one resident of our leafy parish when I pressed him for sponsorship, “you want me to pay you not to drink for a month?”
Basically, yes.
“I walked on hot coals for Cancer Research,” he pointed out smugly. “My wife took part in a skydive for the same charity, my brother cycled from Land’s End to John O’Groats, my daughter raised funds by selling her Christmas presents at a car boot sale.”
“We all do stupid things when we’re drunk,” I pointed out. “That’s why Dryathlon is so important. If it stops one person needlessly jumping out of an aircraft...”
Last January, however, Dryathlon was a bridge too far for the Lockleys. We signed up at 9am on January 2. At 9.30pm, my wife asked: “Do you think sherry counts?”
After sucking the last dregs from the amber bottle, I slurred: “Probably.”
It’s not just health concerns. Julie spent an entire evening working out how much of our family budget is spent on alcohol and became depressed.
I calculate how much of the alcohol budget is spent on our family and become depressed. It took six months for me to drink the combi-boiler she wanted, apparently.
“I drink to forget the stress that is part and parcel of being a journalist,” I told her. And the cost of the combboiler, if I was honest.
She wants me to find an alcohol substitute, like a friend who was given a much-needed warning to stop drinking. “Last orders”, they call it.
He used the money to purchase an industrial lathe for the little jobs like honing banisters and teasing garden furniture out of trees felled in the recent gales.
He has just completed crafting three “toadstool chairs” from the trunk of a dead oak. This concerns me. A rightminded member of society doesn’t spot downed trees and think: “They’d make great fungi.”
“That’s the bookcase done,” he boasted after emerging from the shed. “Now I’ve just got to write the 50 novels to put in it.”
Given a choice between beer and DIY, I’ll choose beer – and to hell with the consequences
My doctor has given me a tip on quitting. It’s called the England drinking game. Just down a pint every time our national team wins something.
And, as a salutory lesson, my wife frequently reminds me of an individual who gets sloshed in the Drum and Monkey every night.
“He’s an ex-boyfriend,” she whispered as he cradled a pint in the pub’s snug. “We split up 40 years ago and he hasn’t stopped drinking since.”
That is one hell of a long celebration.