Another hangover that hit my stomach and my soul rather than my head. This time last year I was in the middle of six months of abstinence and today I envied that me of the past. If only there was some way I could be like him again. But there is no way.
There was no chance of me getting any work or exercise done today, I just wandered around being grumpy to my girlfriend and then went to the shops in my slippers. Alcohol was once a slightly debilitating pleasure, but now I either have to plan a day off in my diary if I have more than two glasses of wine, or just go for it and become a turnip nosed old man shuffling along the street in jogging bottoms mumbling to myself. And as tempting as the second option seems and as fun as Monday night was I think those glorious days of carousing are mainly behind me now. Because the punishment no longer fits the crime.
Most of my friends have young children and jobs, so God knows how they coped with today. I was able to stay in bed til midday (though as usual I was up and awake between 5am and 8am) and then eat cheese toasties for lunch (I had a cheese and pickle one for my main course and a cheese and mango chutney for my pudding), then slump on my sofa in a strange netherworld between reality and dreams. It's a good job I was not responsible for a tiny human being or working in air traffic control. A man with a job on Twitter said he envied my student like existence, but at least if you work in air traffic control and feel like this, you can go into work, keep your head down and get paid (and if you lose a couple of planes then that's regrettable, but nobody's perfect), but if I don't work I don't get paid and then eventually won't be able to afford the mango chutney to go in my toasted sandwich and will have to eat one with just cheese in it. That is the terrifying reality.
I don't think I have the capacity to be a high-functioning alcoholic, even if in my 20s and 30s I somehow kept myself together enough to drink pretty heavily on most nights and still got work done the next day. For a night out with my University friends I wanted to pretend we were still young, but today was another punch in the face from life whose bullying attitude is gradually making me realise that I am not 20 any more. And it's telling perhaps that in the four years since I turned 40 and calmed down a little bit, I have got more work done than I have since those early days in radio.
Episode 3 of Objective went out tonight and I was pretty pleased with the way it turned out. You can listen to it
on iPlayer. Though Twitter was on hand (specifically the comedy nerds at @SOTCAA) to remind me that back in 1995 Stew and I had covered this topic (I have no memory of this at all) in our radio show.
Here we are, parodying the future me. There is nothing worse than being parodied by yourself.
The rehearsal scripts (including cut bits and stuff we didn't bother recording) are up
in the downloads section of the website.
You can read my December newsletter
here
