Days without alcohol - 7
One week down. Just 51 to go! Easy. And how stupid do you naysayers who said I would crack by now feel? Pretty stupid, I guess. Though you might still win as closest guess if I have a drink tomorrow. But I won't! Losers!
My mum thinks I will last to April 23rd. "You've done well to give up so easily," she told me on the phone today, "At least it proves you're not an alcoholic."
"I'm not an alcoholic, mum," I told her.
"I know," she replied unconvincingly, "I'm just saying."
And I don't think it does prove that I am not an alcoholic. I think that years ago when I gave up for six months and told a doctor friend that that at least proved that I wasn't an alcoholic she said that that was exactly the kind of thing an alcoholic would actually do. And when alcoholics give up booze they don't stop being alcoholics, so my mum was wrong on every level. It doesn't prove I'm not an alcoholic and she doesn't not think that I am an alcoholic. Bad luck mum. Shaaaa!
I didn't get a whole lot done today and even though it's Sunday and that's OK, I fear I am sliding back into the old slothful ways of 2007, which I could at least then blame on hangovers. I managed a good 80 minute session in the gym, which set me up for a massive four course dinner (though all the courses were pretty healthy - I ate 1300 calories of food, but had burned off over 600 in they gym, so it all works out!) and did some writing about kissing and youthful shannighans.
I also watched the film "Night at the Museum" which didn't bowl me over, but recently I have found it increasingly hard to find a film that does. It certainly wasn't terrible and Ben Stiller is always fun to watch and I like the fairly subtle gag right at the very end (which I won't spoil, but refers back to something from near the beginning of the film and thus at least thinks its audience is clever enough to remember that far back). It's about a natural history musuem where statues and stuffed animals and skellingtons come to life after sundown. I felt sorry for the jugs and other artifacts that were not so lucky, purely because they did not take animal form.
But it made me think about the nature of statues and more specifically what you have to do to get one made of you. It's quite hard. Although a couple of comedians have had them - Eric Morecambe for sure and I think there's one of Les Dawson being erected soon - it's not something that is likely to happen for me. And I realised I am really going to have to pull my finger out if I am going to be remembered in statue form. I've lived for 40 years and not got anywhere close to having even a small statue made of me. Not even a doll from some TV spin off (which wouldn't count as it's too easy - and yet still it hasn't happened). I guess realistically to get a proper statue on a plinth in a museum or on a column in Trafalgar Square I would probably have to command a big army or become Prime Minister or somehow save the world and if I was going to do any of those things I should really have put in some groundwork by now. At the moment my only real chance of being a statue that comes to life at night would be if someone opens a Museum of Comedy and they have an exhibit there of the "On The Hour" writers' room. In which case there might be a hunched figure somewhere at the back that was meant to represent me, but you wouldn't be able to see his face and if you turned him round it probably wouldn't have been properly finished off and there'd just be a load of straw sticking out where my face should be. And even if they did that, then I am sure quite early on a visitor would point out that "On The Hour" didn't have a writers' room, as all the work was done by individuals or duos at home and then sent in for the cast to ad-lib around and in any case, surely the writers' room wouldn't be the interesting part of On The Hour and wouldn't a more apt diorama show the cast performing in the studio, with Armando looking through the glass with his thumbs up as Steve Coogan, Chris Morris, Patrick Marber and the other properly famous people did their stuff?
And the museum would close the exhibit down and throw the Richard Herring straw-face dummy on to a fire and I'd never get to come alive at night and have crazy adventures.
As if to emphasise the point, Steve Coogan is actually in the film, whilst I am sitting at home in my pants half watching the TV whilst playing Srabulous on Facebook (don't ask me to play you. I only play people I know).
I don't think I really want to have a statue to me, but it's sobering to know that I never shall - well it would be if I wasn't completely sober already. Stautes are stupid at the end of the day. Birds poo on them and vandals knock off their noses or a victorious army pulls it down (with some difficulty) and then drapes its flag over its face, before deciding better of it.
Look at
Ozymandius, who thought he was so cool with his gigantic statue, but now the statue is broken and no-one knows who he is. But at least once upon a time people did know who Ozymandias was and thought he was the king of kings and his legs are still there. Which makes him better than most of the rest of us, who will similarly pass into oblivion and yet no-one will know anything about us, even when we're alive. Ozymandias is brilliant. That's what I take from that poem. Even though he's fictional and never existed, he is still more famous than any of you will ever be. And I bet someone somewhere has made a statue of those legs and smashed face to make some kind of artistic point. That's doubly sobering that a fictional character can get a statue of it made, but that no-one will ever make a statue of me (unless I pull my finger out on the becoming Prime Minister front). I am so sober that I am drunk now.
