Dry

I’m British, we don’t drink for fun; to us it’s a job. We drink so we have the courage to talk to people. We drink to lose our reservations. We’re trained to drink from an early age, and until recently we weren’t allowed to drink after 11pm. Yes, that’s right. 11 pm. The government brought out this law after the outbreak of WW1 because so many man-hours were lost through hangovers and alcoholism. This has kind of backfired, as everyone has become experts at pacing themselves to be absolutely inebriated at exactly ‘last orders’. For those who aren’t familiar with this term, this is a bell that is rung at 10.45 to warn you that you only have 15 minutes to buy as many drinks as you can imbibe before 11.20 when everyone is forcibly ejected from the pub. It isn’t unusual to get two or three drinks in at ‘lasties’ and attempt to drink them all in this bacchanalian half hour.

We’re professionals. If drinking was an Olympic sport, we’d be the sprinters. The Inuits have over a hundred words for snow, we have over a hundred to describe being drunk including ‘mullered’, ‘trollied’, ‘battered’, and my personal favourite ‘rat-arsed’

I’m telling you this on my first blog because I haven’t had a drink since New Year. I’m dry. I do this every January as a thank you to my kidneys for surviving the Christmas excesses.

My friends have disowned me, I’m becoming allergic to lime and soda and I ‘wake up knowing that this is the best I’m going to feel all day’ (I think Rock Hudson coined this phrase) which is a rare experience for me. I like hangovers, the synapses are confused, thoughts blur and ideas germinate. As a songwriter, this has potential. Unfortunately, it’s often the case that a severe hangover reduces any chance of getting any of these ideas down as I feel like I’m wearing a tight trilby and earmuffs.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an alcoholic, I’m just British and January is the longest month.