Day 424 – That alcohol thing

I haven’t had an alcoholic drink for [checks notes] oh, several weeks now.
OK, now I have really checked my notes and it’s 9 and a bit weeks. And this is aside from one glass of really decent Cabernet Sauvignon which went along with this amazing meal.

It’s not something I’m doing for fun, nor am I crowing about it – this post is only in response to a couple of queries via Facebook and email. The story goes a bit like this: after a particularly dodgy evening in Yzerfontein, I had a serious chat with myself about my overall health, and I stopped drinking alcohol.

Simple as that. It wasn’t a planned thing, it was purely a health thing: I’m not getting any younger and I did myself some real damage that night. It wasn’t fun. And so I felt the need to give myself a break from the booze for a while.

And that’s exactly what it is: a break. I have no intentions of being tee-total for ever and ever. But I have to admit that I’m feeling a whole lot healthier since I have stopped drinking, and health is a powerful drug, so I’m in no huge hurry to go back to the beer, wine and brandy. (The Cabernet Sauvignon mentioned above arrived at our table as Jonny’s recommendation as part of the tasting menu that night, and I was absolutely fine with that. I enjoyed it, and then I promptly didn’t drink anything else.)

It has to be said that before that night in Yzerfontein, I was certainly not drinking too much in the are-you-an-alcoholic sense, but I was probably drinking more than I should have been in the stern-look-from-my-GP sense. A quick glass of wine with dinner, a couple of beers with the football, occasionally a late night brandy… it all adds up – especially when dinner is literally every evening and the football is no longer limited to one or two nights each week.
But I think it’s clear that I probably wasn’t in any overt danger because of any sort of addiction, given that I decided one morning that I didn’t want to drink anymore, and I didn’t drink anymore.
My liver is certainly happier. And I’ve lost plenty (or more) weight.

Do I miss it? Yes, of course. Because what’s better than a nice glass of red with a steak or a few beers with the braai? But so far, I haven’t missed it enough to want to go back to it. Yet.

One further point: I’m in no way suggesting that you should do this. How you choose to live your life is completely up to you. I have no say in that and that’s exactly the way it should be.
But wow: the peer pressure from… well… from my peers. It’s been intense, and surprising. You’d think that I was lopping a finger off each time I choose a Coke Light over a Black Label. It’s taken quite a few people quite a lot of time to get their heads around the fact that I can actually choose for myself whether I want a glass of water instead of a brandy and Coke. I’m n years old: I really can make these decisions for myself now.

Anyway, that’s the story and probably all I’ll say about it on here. I certainly don’t plan to announce a resumption of drinking activities, but then I never planned to talk about their cessation in the first place.

Day 222 – I need help

Allegedly, anyway.
[Spoiler: No, I don’t.]

Long and dull story short, we need a few more points on our medical insurance spin-off programme to earn better discounts and nicer freebies. I’ve all but reached my limit for points earned through exercise for the year, so I started looking at other ways of scoring enough to get us over the metaphorical, virtual line.

And there is was: a mental health questionnaire that I could do in 5 minutes while watching the football. And it promised almost twice as many points as a 30 minute workout with my heart pumping at 150bpm. Easy money.

And so I went for it. As I remember, there were seven parts to it and it was all multiple choice stuff – often the old ‘”I strongly disagree” to “I strongly agree” with this statement’ kind of thing. I strongly agreed with some of them and I strongly disagreed with others. Occasionally, where I felt fairly neutral about the given statement, I clicked “neutral”.

And then I finished the thing and collected my 500 points and it suggested that I speak to a mental health counsellor.

wut?

It also appeared to class me as “at risk” from my drinking habits. But my drinking habits are equivalent to a glass of wine each evening. If that puts me at risk, then the world (including me) is really in trouble.

And I truthfully answered the mental health questions in the same sort of way. Sure, I don’t think I’m 100% happy 100% of the time, but the fact is that none of us is having an easy ride this year, and if you actually are still 100% happy 100% of the time, then I think that it’s actually you that has the mental health issue.

Honestly, this questionnaire seems to be the equivalent of googling your headache and the daily mail dot com telling you that you have a brain tumour. Overkill much?

I’m well aware that denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, but if you feel that my having trouble getting to sleep a week last Saturday demands that I seek immediate help from a counsellor, then you’re
a) being a bit dramatic,
b) wasting my time and (more importantly) theirs, and
c) not a Sheffield United supporter.

I will be good, I will to continue to exercise my mind and body, and really: I won’t off myself anytime soon. I’ll also try and get less stressed about the football, but having narrowly lost this week’s fantasy matchup to that “goal” by Tariq Lamptey – insult added to injury by the fact that the foul on Højbjerg was also counted as a dispossession and further that the two goals scored against Lamptey weren’t deducted from his score – I feel I’m ok to feel a bit aggrieved every now and again.

So yes, football – such a big bit of my life – is still not a good thing for me at the moment.

But I promise: I don’t need help.
I’m ok. Really.

Day 65 – Coming soon

I’m not saying that South Africa has missed being able to order wine, but here are guys from Getwine (you may remember them from these posts) with the orders that they are sorting ready for delivery once the Level 3 lockdown comes into force on Monday:

As many people commented: “mine is in there somewhere”.

I actually ordered 3 weeks ago, but I’m not expecting them to be knocking on my door at 8am on Monday morning.
(Or, looking at this, maybe any time in June…) [sad trombone]

Day 34 – Stash news

Yesterday: another day of lockdown, another day of not touching The Stash.

Well done, me.

The Stash is the household alcohol supply – specifically my half of it. We’re not permitted to buy alcohol here during the lockdown, so it’s a case of making what you have, last.

My wife and I generally drink different stuff, so we can effectively divide the adult drinks into hers (gin, white wine, cider) and mine (brandy, red wine, beer). And we’re lucky in that I saw the lockdown coming and stocked up a bit before it hit us. We’re still ok for drinks at the moment, but it is a one-way street, because there’s going to be nothing new coming in for really quite some time.

I’ve realised that I have taken something of a scientific approach: subconsciously analysing my drinking habits, while (equally subconsciously) grading the drinks I have left. Some sort of informal scale has been drawn up mentally, and I refer to it often.

An aside: it’s interesting (to me, at least) that one starts drinking the decent brandy first, leaving the rough stuff til desperation strikes, while the “everyday” wine takes a hammering long before you contemplate the nice stuff hidden at the back of the cupboard under the stairs.

My first worry is beer though. I like beer and there’s not too much left. And so, by the laws of scarcity, every single one becomes more valuable: something special, not to be wasted. Add that to their already inflated value on the subconscious grading scale, and you can see that they need to be looked after.

Problem is that the first one each evening goes down like the proverbial homesick mole. Whoosh.

There’s a South African expression:

n boer maak ‘n plan

Literally, “a farmer makes a plan”: something about the indefatigable nature of the Afrikaans farmer, sure, but with an element of “necessity is the mother of invention” as well.

My invention is to replace my first beer with a cheap brandy and coke. Yes, the cheap brandy (I’m using Olaf Bergh, named after the noise you make after drinking three of them) is part of The Stash, but it’s a very minor part – way down the list from the heady heights of Castle Milk Stout. And it’s backed up by more cheap(ish) brandy in the form of two unopened bottles of Klipdrift Premium still safely sequestered.

It’s not great, but since it goes down like a fat kid on a see-saw anyway, there’s not too much afterburn. Immediate thirst quenched.

Not only does this mean that I don’t wastefully use up a first beer, it also means that I can’t have a second beer either – simply because I haven’t had a first. And thus The Stash remains in (relatively) good repair. Brandy and coke certainly wouldn’t be my first choice of beverage in any other situation, but if I were in fact a boer, it might well be, and that little bit of synchronicity makes me happy.

Tonight is pub quiz night and so I will require some actual beer, but that initial hit will once again be from Olaf, the previously unsung superhero of the lockdown.

Please join me in raising a glass to him this evening. What you fill it with is up to you.

Day 9 – The Garden

Mrs 6000 has been working overtime upon overtime for the last two weeks, so it was with some delight that I heard her suggest  that we should launch a bit of an attack on the garden this morning. Rather that than another day in front of the laptop.

However, it’s now 4pm. I’ve only just emerged from the shower and every single muscle hurts. Yes, even that one. Some hard work has been done and tomorrow is going to bring the traditional World of Pain™, but on the plus side, there have been no Zoom meetings, no spreadsheets and no billion work Whatsapps.

On the negative side, there is some music being played in the house, and (IMHO) it’s not really great music. Thus, I have retreated to some B-sides and remixes from The Streets while I have been writing this. This was a good call.

I fancy a beer but I’m mindful that I made a bit of dent in the stash last night and let’s face it, no-one really expects us to be out of this lockdown on April 13th, do they? I’m thinking that three weeks will actually stretch to six or eight. My beer cache will also have to last that long.
And so maybe I’ll have some milk instead of Milk Stout this evening.