Oh no. ‘Tis the season to be jolly. ‘Tis. There’s no avoiding it; ’tis here. And that means socialising and being merry, and that means drinking. I’m looking forward to it in equal measures of anticipation and dread. I haven’t been drinking at all. This now seems stupid, because my tolerance is so low that even the smell of a hot port* could have me climbing tall buildings. Well, maybe not tall ones, but buildings, maybe even building sites.
First there was the marathon training: that put a right old halt to my drinking gallop. My tolerance plummeted as my fitness soared. I developed tree-trunk thighs and an alcohol cut-off level of 2 thimblefuls. This was fine til I went out for dinner with a friend a couple of nights after the run and I could not join in the lovely glasses of wine the waiter kept pouring. I ordered extra water and just about made it home.
I decided it was a great thing: I was saving money, increasing productivity and vastly reducing the spend on stationery for next-day apology letters. As a temporary state, this was going very well. As a longer-term lifestyle choice, it was never going to last.
I like drinking. I like the loosening of the tongue, the warming of the cockles, the shooting of the crap. I can no longer handle the hangovers, though, and there’s the rub: they come now, even if I’ve only been looking at ads for alcohol, especially those dodgy drinks they only ever advertise at Christmas which they try to make sexy by saying you should have them on the rocks; you know that the last place you saw a bottle was at your Nan’s, being rubbed into her joints. “Ooh, I’d love a glass of that Flamabella“, you muse, “with ice.” But they never have ice, do they? They never…have…the…ice.
In the next few weeks, like you, I have about 20 million people I have to see. Putting it like that, it sounds like a chore: it isn’t. I want to see every single one of them, but I will want to drink with all of them (even if it’s just a snifter of Flamabella - the drink that’s so sophisticated it has some kind of fake Italian name). I’ve already stocked up on milk-thistle and soluble codeine (it’s hard to have just one snifter of Flamabella - the drink models have when they’re being paid) because I’m having to plan the hangovers in advance. One of those hangovers will be in Ireland. At the airport. That will not be fun. But I will laugh and remember the amazing night I had, sipping Flamabella with my friends by a roaring open fire, the ice (which they had) never melting because we were that sophisticated. That – if you will – cool.
Nah. Never gonna happen. Better stock up on soup.
* Measure of port, hot water, brown sugar, lemon and cloves. Hot toddy, but with port, ok? Why is this so hard to order in English pubs? It’s great.
Catch me having Flamabella (among other fictitious things) with London Comedy Improv on Dec 30. Details here.
