Managed to find a four day gap in my busy schedule to get a few days away to relax and celebrate my girlfriend's birthday and with breathtaking ease we found ourselves in Prague by lunchtime. Which is lucky because that is where we had booked a hotel. I realised very quickly that my resolution to quit drinking was going to be put to the test. As we sat in reception a waiter came out with a tray with two glasses of champagne on it. He had arrived on cue as the receptionist said there would be a drink to welcome us and I had quickly asked if I could just have a juice. So as he stepped through the door, the waiter had to do a rapid and comical turn in an attempt to pretend he and the champagne had never been there. We were also told that every evening in the hotel there is a free cheese and wine tasting and if you know me at all you know how hard I find it to turn down free stuff. Especially if it's free stuff that I have essentially already paid for. Add to that that there is a major celebration in a couple of days and the fact that tonight marked my 100th day without booze then you can see that everything seems to point to me returning to the teat of Bacchus pretty soon. Last time I gave up I drank on holiday on the 101st day of abstinence and all seems teed up for me to do the same this time. I had set no time limit on giving up and if I don't start again at some point soon it's going to become a bit of a massive deal, but I don't know. I might relent for the moment. But if I get through three nights in Prague without sampling their lovely beer, then I may have to admit that I am now teetotal.
I was pretty much exhausted by the time we had got into our room - it's been early starts for the last few days for me and the AIOTM writing tension has now been released, so we decided to put the sight seeing on hold and just relax. We popped out for lunch, having big bendy local sausages (with the menu saying that beer was the ideal accompaniment - though I had Sprite) and then came back to use the hotel's spa facilities and have a Balinese massage. Because they always say that the first thing you should do in the Czech Republic is have a massage from a Balinese lady. I had to wear tiny pants to cover my modesty, but luckily I worked out the right way round to put them on.
We had a very nice late dinner in the empty hotel restaurant - Prague could wait untiul tomorrow. My real girlfriend had a hot chocolate at the end of the meal, which I tasted and it reminded me of the fact that as a kid I used to really like eating the dry hot chocolate powder - I would put it in an egg cup and then dip my wet finger into it and lick it off. But then I remembered how I also liked to eat raw Oxo cubes. What a strange thing that was. And I was taken back to remembering the red cardboard boxes they came in and the silver foil you had to remove. I was a very fussy eater and it seems strange that I would be happe eating this strange cube of condensed stock, but I loved it at the time. Did my parents know? Why did they let me do that? Wasn't it annoying to get to the cupboard and find no stock cubes left? And what was with me? Did I think I was a spaceman eating dehydrated food out of futuristic packets? The stangest things you ate as a child might make a good phone in for 6Music. Make a note of it Collings and start thinking about it the rest of you.
Anyway tonight we drank water with out meal (my girlfriend is also abstaining for the moment, after having had a bit of a time of it at her birthday party a couple of weeks ago) and that all seemed fine. So whatever else happens on holiday I have once again made it to 100 days without booze. I wonder if I will make it to 200. Or even 102.
