The diet and no boozing has been progressing well. I've lost six pounds and having a drink hasn't even crossed my mind. The fact I haven't been out very much has probably helped with the latter of these, but as always (and you can check last year's warming up if you don't believe me) I am enjoying the abstinence at this stage and thinking that maybe I will never drink again (go on check last January and see if I said anything similar - I probably drank more in 2004 than in any year of my life).
Tonight was my first serious test as I was going to a party. Worse still it was a party organised by Al Murray, a man who loves alcohol so much that he actually spends a significant proportion of his life trying to pass himself off as a pub landlord - even though he isn't one. I don't know how he actually makes a living, but he certainly doesn't have a pub.
I knew he'd be keen to get me back on the Road of Excess (which is a two-way street with the Palace of Wisdom at one end and the Hut of Stupidity at the other. Most people on that wretched thoroughfare strangely seem to find themselves at the latter place, even if they are heading for the former), so cleverly I decided to drive to the party.
Predictably Murray was there tempting me with champagne upon my arrival. He boasted that he had already overturned the no-alcohol new year's resolution of one of his guests and was looking to make it two out of two. "It's the 8th of January," I told him, "To falter so soon would be a humiliation. I only made it to the 16th last year and that was pathetic. I can't do worse than that."
He still persisted like some kind of fermented grape based Satan, but I had an ace up my sleeve. "Anyway, I'm driving," I added nonchalently, yet triumphantly.
"Oh...well.... in that case...."
Murray was defeated. Whilst it is is honourable to be pissed when you are a pedestrian, society can not condone a man who has drunk getting behind the wheel of a car. He then (mainly) left me alone.
Of course had Murray been clever (which he isn't. I can confirm that like Stewart Lee he is not a genius - even though both of these men have spent a considerable amount of time writing stuff with a genius, the genius has not rubbed off on them. You can tell this because true genius is not recognised in a person't lifetime and both of those idiots have had plaudits a plenty, unless they have been writing with the genius, when they have had no recognition at all. I am not going to tell you who the genius is. Only very intelligent readers will be able to work out who I am talking about), he would have simply said, "But Rich, you live about a mile and a half from here and it's Sunday tomorrow and so parking will be free. Why don't you have loads of drink and then get a taxi home and come and pick up your car tomorrow?"
So I got to watch loads of people getting increasingly plastered, whilst I got a headache and wished I was at home. As the party was mainly comprised of other parents from the school where Al's eldest daughter goes, I wrongly surmised that the festivities would drizzle out at about 11pm. But at 2am it was still going strong. These parents were making the most of their babysitters and partying like it was 1999 (and it was still before 1999 so 1999 seemed like a futuristic and exciting place to be, rather than being the unexceptional year that we now all recognise it to be).
I managed to get out just before the place turned into a wife swap orgy (I imagine), which is lucky as I don't have a wife and so would probably just had to swap hands.
So although I was miserable and had no fun and brought everyone else down with my puritanical take on life, at least I didn't cave in and drink a bit of alcohol.
So I am a winner.
Right?
