My body seems to be telling me that it's time to stop drinking alcohol all together. Where once upon a time I could go out, get blasted every night and still pretty much operate on a day to day basis, now just the tiniest amount of booze acts like a dirty bomb on my brain and other internal organs for the next 24 hours.
Last night as I sat alone in the bar contemplating the fragile veneer of show business glamour I drank two glasses of red wine. They were large glasses and I drank them fairly quickly, and maybe I hadn't eaten all that much. But at most I had had a pathetic two thirds of a bottle of wine. And yet this impacted on my day today and probably my day tomorrow to such an extent that I think my only option is to cut out the booze completely again, unless I know that I can luxuriate in bed the day after.
I woke up at about 5am feeling a little discombobulated and then couldn't get back to sleep. This seems to happen to me now any time that I get drunk. I wake up early, can't get back to sleep for about three hours and then, if I have the opportunity can finally drift off again at about 8. But today I had to get up and go back to London. So my four hours sleep had to do me.
I was also ravenously hungry and so took advantage of the buffet breakfast, but also bought snacks and chocolate for the train (not literally, for myself to eat on the train - although I am from Somerset I understand that a train is a machine and will not look upon me any more kindly if I give it votive gifts). I had eaten well over my calorie limit before lunchtime and knew I was too hazy and sick to go to the gym.
After two glasses of wine?
The younger Oliver Reedesque me would be humiliated by such an admission. When I did my 50 dates I pretty much got paralytic ever single day for a month and a half. Admittedly by the end of it I was incredibly ill and never quite recovered my drinking prowess, but I would have had ten times as much alcohol a night as I had yesterday.
I just have too much work to do to be wasting hours away feeling too awful to even face turning on my computer.
On the train I sat opposite a businessman (who was in a suit and tie in case you're interested) who was on the phone trying to make some deals. His life couldn't be any different than mine. He was being all sensible and serious and saying things like "Their loss is our gain" with utter commitment and satisfaction and no sense of embarrassment. Later he would describe some of his competitors or maybe his co-workers as "Blind men in a room discussing colours." I presume he was trying to diss them with this metaphor, saying they had no idea what they were talking about. But to my mind I can think of little more interesting than getting a group of blind people into a room and making them discuss colours. If you had never seen colour then what would you make of it, how would you imagine what colour was like, how would you grasp the concept at all. The imagination required and plus the slight tragedy of knowing that these men would never be able to know for sure what colour even was, would surely make for a magical and poetical event that might tell the observer a lot about the human condition. It would be art, but this businessman was not interested in that. He was only interested in business and closing his deals and making money.
The thing that really set him apart from me, and the thing that made me realise that I can never operate in the adult world was a part of the conversation where whoever was on the other end of the phone was suggesting a possible person for them to work with on the project they were discussing.
"What's his name?" asked my bullish travelling companion, "Will Lee? His name is Will Lee?" For a second he looked like he might revert back to the six year old boy that is surely hidden somewhere inside the recesses of our brain and laugh at this. After all the man who he was being asked to work with was called Will Lee. Which sound like "willy". You'd think Will Lee might insist on being called William or Bill or maybe Billy so his name wasn't Bill Lee and thus sound like Billy. Better he would be Billy Lee than Bill Lee and have to be constantly asked "Billy who?"
There was a definite pause as the businessman tried to keep his composure and remember he was in the middle of an important call worth millions to him and his company and that saying "Will Lee? That sounds like willy!" might ruin everything and destroy the facade.
I would definitely have done that if I was him, which is why I could not operate in the adult world. But I know that some part of him was thinking it. That he was having to resist the temptation to mock that bloody idiot Will Lee. Surely he might get away with a manly sounding "Well he sounds like a cock!" but no, maturity and adult expectations meant that instead he said, "Is he the kind of fella we can work with?" (which I suppose might have been a very tangential masturbation reference, but I don't think it was) and carried on with his serious, yet ultimate entirely phoney business chat. He was projecting a persona of seriousness and professionalism and maybe he'd been doing it for so long that he actually believed it himself. But when a man doesn't openly snigger on discovering that someone is called Will Lee or I.P Freely or Fanny Muff then something in them has died. Plus the person on the other end of the phone should realise that they are dealing with someone pretending to be something other than they are. If they can pretend to think that the name Will Lee is not funny, then who knows what other lies they are telling you? Perhaps it was a test - if he doesn't laugh at this then we know that everything he says is just bullshit.
It was all interesting food for thought for my new book, in which I want to deal with the question of whether maturity is just a false construct, something that we think we should go along with in an attempt to appear grown up or whether I am just stuck as a six year old and it's me who is in the wrong.
I got back to London and did some press for the tour, thought about going for a swim, but went and bought some chips instead and took them home and had them with fried eggs. I haven't done this for years and I don't really eat junk food any more, but this was just what my raddled body was craving and it was fucking lush. There were so many chips in the packet that I thought I couldn't possibly eat them (and wondered that if this was a regular portion how much you'd get in the large), but within minutes they were all gone.
I felt better, but still crap. Another day had disappeared and I was ready to sleep for at least 12 hours.
All because of two glasses of wine. That I didn't even enjoy.
Which is why I have to stop drinking.
My body is telling me to grow up, even if my brain is still stuck in primary school. But please, if you're reading this and you're called Will Lee, have a good long think about yourself and consider a name change.
