OFF THE WAGON

My dentist prescribed me a week's course of metronidazole last Monday to get rid of a gum infection. The packet instructed me not to drink alcohol until at least 48 hours after I had taken the last antibiotic. Nine consecutive days of not drinking - this is by far the longest dry spell of my adult life.

So what have I learned?

- that I can get to sleep quite easily at night without alcohol (which may seem a worrying point to make, but I wasn't at all sure that I could before)
- that I can dance without alcohol (in normal circumstances this may have proved impossible, but in the Silent Disco room on Friday night, I mashed-potatoed rather effectively to a hip-hop remix of Ray Charles's "I've got a woman")
- that abstinence does not make you sleep any better, or make you feel any fresher the next day (not that I feel too bad anyway)
- that I am hopelessly besotted with, if not quite dependent on, decent lager and red wine (though Bitburger is by far the best of the non-alcoholic beers, and not too bad a substitute)
- that Kaliber beer is a pox upon the world of soft beverages - it tastes like a malted milk biscuit dunked in a pint of stale bitter, liquidised, and whizzed through a soda-stream.

Anyway, it is with some relief that I uncorked a bottle of Fleurie this evening. It represents the end of an educative, cleansing and rather self-righteous era, but at the same time a rather regrettable one, and not one which I wish to repeat.

Cheers!