Tagged with inspiration …

Jan 25 2012
4 Comments
Booze Jokes, Funny, Inspiration

Dolly Parton, Me and missing 69

Not mother?

Yesterday was Day 76 of my Year Of Living Sober. That means it’s time for…

Little Booze Joke 76

Dolly Parton, carrying a pair of rare birds in a small cage, walks into a bar. The barman says, “Nice tits,” and Dolly says, “Why, thank-you. It’s always nice to meet a fellow bird lover.”

Budda bing, budda boom!

Actually, I feel a little like I’m in a cage too. I feel like I’ve locked myself in and I’m not sure it’s good for my mental or physical health.

Let me explain.

When I started my YOLS I had one intention: to not drink for one year. Then I increased the challenge to my pre-YOLS boozier self by starting up this blog. I thought it might be fun and interesting to blog about my year of living without a drop of alcohol.

And it is fun. But to make sure it stays fun I have realized I need to let go of my obsessive/compulsive idea that I have to blog about not drinking EVERY DAY.

The most important thing is to stick to the YOLS: a year off booze is what it’s all about; the talking (okay, writing) about it is just a bonus. Plus my life is going through more changes too so I should cut myself some slack about easing my foot off the bloggin’ accelerator. I mean, before the birth of my second daughter—a little less than a week ago—I went 68 days straight not only not-drinking but also blogging every day. That’s pretty good, isn’t it? I blogged about my YOLS every day until Day 69.

I missed Day 69.

And since then I’ve started thinking like a stripper paid per clothing item: less might be more.

So maybe I’ll do a shorter blog each day, a joke only, or even skip a few days and put all that stored up booze-free blogging juice into fewer, dare I say better, posts?

Yeah, I’ve got a feeling less is definitely going to be more.

Much more.

My name is Ben and I’m a social experiment.
☆
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Jan 25 2012
2 Comments
Booze Jokes, Funny, Inspiration

Boozeless Balancing Act at Newborn Circus

Image may have been digitally altered.

Yesterday was Day 75 of my Year Of Living Sober. It was a Tuesday.

As with yesterday’s post I’m starting (as opposed to finishing) today’s with a joke.

Here it is…

Little Booze Joke 75

A man carrying a cock walks into a bar and, pointing to his feathered companion’s tail says, “Give me one of them.”

Ba ha ha.

Ha!

Geez I love a good laugh. And, whether or not you find that joke funny, I imagine you do too. Who doesn’t? Life can get serious, what with all the responsibilities of having to dress yourself, feed yourself and then have the self-control to make sure you don’t poop your pants on public transport. I mean surely I’m not the first to wonder, ”How come there isn’t a toilet on the bus?”

Or maybe I am the first to wonder that?

Whatever.

I guess what I’m trying to say is sometimes, when confronted with all the demands life can place on us, it’s important to be silly; you have to be able to laugh at yourself and your situation.

So that’s what I’m trying to do at the moment. As I try and balance my need to be a productive writer and provide for my family with the domestic responsibilities of adjusting to life with a newborn addition to our family of four (now) I’m doing my best to remember to see the lighter side of it all.

Without getting into the viscosity-, texture- and stink-difference between a five-day-old’s and a seventeen-month-old’s poo, and without disclosing the emotional rollercoaster my wife has been on since the drugs started wearing off (and the hormones started kicking in), suffice to say daddy is being pulled in multiple directions for feeding, cleaning and putting to bed duties; while daddy is himself five days overdue on beddy time.

I’m a zombie man; but still I gotsta write.

And despite what you might think, all this craziness hasn’t driven me back to drink. I may be juggling babies in a circus of my own making but I’m not sure boozing it up right now would help very much. Anyway, even if it would, I can’t imagine where I’d find a quiet enough corner in this mad house to down a bottle of wine.

Though I can imagine that given enough time—like say five minutes—I’d give it a good crack.

But that’s not going to happen. Not for another 290 days.

My name is Ben and I’m a social experiment.

Oh yeah…today is Day 76 of my Year Of Living Sober.

It is a Wednesday.

☆
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Jan 24 2012
10 Comments
Booze Jokes, Funny, Inspiration

Time for Drinking ‘Cherry’ Wine

Hello.

Thanks for dropping by Year Of Living Sober.

Before I get into today’s post proper I’ve decided to break with my custom of finishing off with a booze related joke by kicking off with FOUR. If you haven’t read any of my other HILARIOUS posts may I advise you to prepare yourself for WETTING YOUR PANTS time.

If you HAVE read any of my other posts you’ll know I’m already pulling your leg.

:)

Anywho, here goes…

Little Booze Joke 71

A nurse walks into a bar and the barman says, “Why the long needle?”

:)

But wait, there’s more…

Little Booze Joke 72

A woman walks into a bar, stands on her head and lets her dress fall down around her ears. The barman says, “Sorry, lady, we don’t serve Brazilians.”

Little Booze Joke 73

An anesthesiologist walks into a bar and feels nothing.

Little Booze Joke 74

A baby crawls into a bar and the barman says, “Fancy a little nip?” and the baby says, “Mate, I’m so hungry I could have the whole nipple.”

Now you’re laughing off your chair we can get to the ‘serious’ stuff. It’s…

TIME FOR DRINKING ‘CHERRY’ WINE

 

Good wine waiting to be enjoyed

Regular readers of this blog (it sure is nice knowing you’re out there; I appreciate every comment) may have been asking some questions over the past few days:

“What happened?”

“Has he given up?”

“Has he fallen off the YOLS wagon?”

Because up until last Friday I hadn’t missed a day of blogging about my year of living sober. And although when I started on this exercise in self-discipline/self-torture/self-bladder-rejuvination I never actually made a commitment to posting every day it did turn out that way. I had posted every day since beginning this adventure on 11/11/2011 (at eleven minutes passed eleven).

Until Cherry.

With the arrival  (and process of arrival—i.e. ‘birth’) of my second daughter my pattern of, and new addiction to, blogging (see previous post) broke like the membranes holding back the waters in my wife’s womb. Something had to give. I could not be in two places (bedside, computer) at once and chose to be in the place where life was really happening: the place where life in this world was just beginning.

You see as much as I love writing I also follow that old (?) adage of ‘life first, writing second’. Or something like that.

But slowly, life is getting back to normal.

Yesterday, after checking my emails, I took our eldest daughter (there is seventeen months difference between Honey and Cherry, the same as between my wife and her sister—which is nice) up to the local post office where I sent off a bulk order of ten copies of my novel (The Last Great Day) to a book club in Perth.

This morning I took Honey for a walk along the river while my mother-in-law (how lucky are we to have her and my father-in-law’s support!) baby-sat our newborn while my wife, Pauli, caught up on some sleep.

We are also easing into taking visitors. A couple of days ago (I think?—it’s all still a little blurry: Pauli’s not the only one who needs to catch up on snooze time) we introduced Cherry to a couple of her second-cousins and one of our closest ‘family’ (as they say) friends, Reva. As it turns out Reva is not yet one of my regular blog readers.

As she coo’d and oo’d over our latest edition addition, Reva was surprised to learn about my year of sobriety. However, and knowing me as an ‘enthusiastic’ boozer pre-YOLS, it didn’t stop Reva from handing me the gift of a bottle of wine she and her hubby (thanks Jeremy) had thoughtfully included with gifts for Cherry, Pauli and Honey.

And I was only too happy to accept it.

Because even though I will wait until the end of my year off booze before popping the cork (actually, I think it’s a screw top) on that bottle of Wolf Blass Cabernet Sauvignon (2008), I will enjoy knowing who gave that particular bottle of wine to me, why they gave it to me, and when.

It was from cherished friends, thoughtful, generous and like-minded enough to know that some times are perfect for drinking wine.

And sometimes it’s good to wait.

My name is Ben and I’m a social experiment.

☆

How about you? Ever been given something you couldn’t immediately enjoy?

Please leave a comment.

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Jan 20 2012
7 Comments
Booze Jokes, Effects of Abstinence, Funny, Inspiration

New Daddy Cuts the Cord on Alcohol ‘Addiction’

Dr Mitchell (I presume?) cutting the cord

Yesterday was Day 70 of my Year Of Living Sober. It was a Thursday.

Instead of performing my usual blog-trick of writing and uploading a new post every day—an exercise in self-discipline almost equal to that of my decision not to drink for a year—I did something else.

I held my wife’s hand.

Because, as each contraction came, as the intensity of pain Mrs YOLS (Pauli) experienced grew with each passing hour (over 24 before we headed into hospital) I decided it was more important to stay with my wife during the final stages of pregnancy than to excuse myself and ‘do some work’.

“Derr.” I hear you say. “Who’d miss being there for the birth of their child just to write just another of the seventeen-trillion and counting blog posts Google shits sifts through every hour?

Not me, is the answer.

Yes, some readers may be understandably horrified I could even be thinking of anything else other than comforting and supporting my wife as she and our family (we already have one gorgeous seventeen-month old baby girl) prepared for a truly life changing event; surely the birth of a human being is a miracle worth—at the very least—turning off Twitter for?

It is. But rest assured I was never in two minds, only in one. Of course the rest of the world could wait, for as long as it took. Unfortunately though my ‘one’ mind is also an often busy one: my creativity expresses itself continually, whether or not my mouth, pen or hands transcribe the cascade of sometimes crazy, sometimes inspired, ideas into form. And, as a blog like this is nothing without complete honesty, I must come forth:

A couple of times early during my wife’s labour I felt bad about missing my first day so far of YOLS blog posting.

But I got over it.

Maybe it helped that our new gorgeous girl, a big gorgeous girl weighing in at 4.11 kgs (or 9.1 lbs for my USA friends), entrance into the world this morning brought forth in me such joy as neither a blog or even a whole bottle of Moet & Chandon ever could: I am sparkling on the inside; I am happy to write gushing prose I may live to regret. I am a New Daddy.

Again.

Cool. Unlike my passing moments of ego-centred concern about having this hiccup in my, until now, 69 days straight of writing about temporary teetotallism, my overwhelming thought is of how cool and untouchable this feeling is.

Cooler and more untouchable than a six-pack of Budweisers in Walt Disney’s cryogenic freezer.

And as far as being tempted to indulge in a celebratory glass of sparkling alcoholic grapes, of using this great milestone of my second daughter’s birth as an excuse to take a break from my YOLS, it didn’t cross my mind once.

Why would it? I’m drunk on baby love.

And I’m sure I’ve never before felt so intoxicated.

My name is Ben and I’m a social experiment.

☆

Little Booze Joke 70:

An expectant father walks into a bar and the barman points to a wide selection of imported beers on tap, foreign wines on shelves, and expensive spirits hanging over head. “What’ll it be?” says the barman. The expectant father looks around, scratches his head then pours a glass of complimentary water from a jug sitting on the bar. “I don’t know?” he says sitting down, “but I’m pretty sure a boy or a girl.”

P. S. Even though I missed writing about Day 69 of my Year Of Living Sober (it was a Wednesday and my wife was in labour all day and night) here is a joke for that day.

Little Booze Joke 69

A blood sample walk into a bar and the barman says, “Sorry, we don’t serve your type.”

☆

How about you? Ever prioritized a family commitment over a personal or work one? Everyday, you say?

Please leave a comment.

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Jan 18 2012
2 Comments
Booze Jokes, Effects of Abstinence, Funny

How is a white Russian like a bucket of hot chips?

A White Russian has the same calories as a bucket of chips

Yesterday was Day 68 of my Year Of Living Sober. It was a Tuesday.

Out and about in town doing some errands, and finding myself a bit peckish, I contemplated heading to a burger joint to pick up some hot chips. But, since being on my YOLS, and having found myself turning more frequently than ever before to sugary soft-drinks (instead of my usual beer and wine sugar-hitters), I decided not to. I didn’t want anymore empty calories.

And then, when I was reading the daily newspaper, I was really glad I hadn’t chipped it. I was also glad to be reminded about another benefit of giving up drinking for a year: it helps you lose weight.

In the paper there was an article about how binge boozing can be as bad as binge eating for our waist lines.  A helpful table showed how various drinks compared—calorie wise—to junk food. It turns out drinking a white russian is equivalent to eating a bucket of hot chips.

Well, and as Homer Simpson might say, “Doh!”, or as I might say, “Derr”.

Surely we all know by now how whether you choose beer, wine, cider or spirit, booze can have the same impact as eating a wheelbarrow full of donuts. When it comes to weight loss alcohol is the devil. If not the devil exactly, then certainly his right hand man. And, not only are most alcoholic beverages full of the dreaded ‘empty’ calories (those that offer no nutritional benefit) alcohol also slows down our ability to metabolize fats, like the fat that make chips taste so good.

But I didn’t give up drinking to lose weight (though I wouldn’t turn away the fat fairy if she dropped by to take a few more pounds of flesh from around my spare tyre). My reason for giving up alcohol for a year was simple: I wanted to break the habit. So what am I worried about with the chips?

And maybe I shouldn’t beat myself up too much if I feel like the odd bucket. At least I aint’ had a white Russian in years. And I haven’t had a drink for 68 days.

My name is Ben and I’m a social experiment.

☆

Little Booze Joke 68:

A parasite walks into a bar and the barman says ‘Sorry, we don’t serve parasites here,” and the parasite says ‘You’re not a very good host’.

How about you? When you drink less alcohol do you drink more sometin’ else? Or can you happily replace your beer, wine or spirit with water?

Please leave a comment.

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Jan 17 2012
3 Comments
Booze Jokes, Funny

Bananas or Beer?

Bananas: drink one today.

Yesterday was Day 67 of my Year Of Living Sober. It was a Monday.

In the afternoon my wife and I visited the local shopping centre to pick up a few things from the grocery store including: red-wine vinegar, chill and lime mayonnaise, and some alcohol substitutes: ginger beer, lemonade, and passion-fruit flavoured soft drink. And, whilst returning to the car I noticed this picture (above) advertising banana’s as a replacement for sports drinks.

And it got me thinking.

Since bananas, when left to ripen long enough, produce alcohol, maybe the Australian Banana people could try another angle for their advertising? Instead of just taking on the sports drink companies why not tackle the alcohol industry too? Why not replace a stubby of beer with a banana?

I can see the artwork now—and the copy:

Underneath a sunny picture of a ‘real man’ type holding a bunch of half-a-dozen bananas (complete with condensation dripping sexily—everything is sexy in advertising land—off the firm fruit) would be the slogan:

“Pick up a six-pack today.”

Dan Murphy’s (Australia’s biggest chain of warehouse sized alcohol stores) could have banana’s chilling in the glass-fronted fridges, next to the Fosters and Heineken. Perhaps, for the more sophisticated booze drinkers of the world, some more bananas could be offered at room temperature, alongside the Merlot’s, and Cabernet Sauvignon’s.

Maybe the government could use a similar campaign to tackle binge drinking?

I mean, how many banana’s can one teenager eat?

I don’t know. For all I know, to prove their recklessness and wild abandon to each other, kid’s today could be having fruit-eating contests instead of speed-drinking contests.

They could be, but I doubt it.

My name is Ben and I’m a social experiment.

☆

Little Booze Joke 67:

A banana and an apple walk into a bar and the barman says, “Sorry, we don’t serve fruits in here,” and the banana turns to the apple with a huff, delicately fixes the apples mussed up hair, then turns back to the barman and replies sarcastically, “How did you know we’re gay?”

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Jan 16 2012
2 Comments
Booze Jokes, Fiction, Film & TV

Sober Superhero Scott Pilgrim

The force is strong in this one

Yesterday was Day 66 of my Year Of Living Sober. It was a Sunday.

During the day we had a visit from my sister-in-law, I sat in the sun and got a little burnt, and then, when our daughter hit the sack and my sis-in-law hit the road I made a vegetable dhal with red lentils, pumpkin, and coconut milk.

There were other vegetables in there too but what is important is how yummy it was:

Delicious.

I washed it down with a non-alcoholic beer, a Coopers Birell: my preferred favourite ‘near beer’ (as they call them in America; not to be confused with a near bear—which is what some people call hairy athletes).

During my YOLS I have grown to enjoy the taste of this particular brand of near beer. I rarely have more than one or two at a time though and I find it kills any cravings for the REAL stuff.

Nice.

Dinner was just lovely. Then, after doing the dishes and tidying up a bit I sat down with my heavily pregnant wife (who’s due any day now) and watched Scott Pilgrim vs The World, on DVD.

Now, I don’t think it’s giving the ending away to say Master Pilgrim wins. This is a fun, ‘feel cool’ film after all: it’s pacy, witty and has an awesome (kids don’t say that anymore, do they?) soundtrack. But looking through my YOLS colored glasses there was one scene I took particular note of.

The only time Scott Pilgrim (reluctant superhero in search of true sex love) gets really angry is after he downs a couple of G & T’s (gin and tonics, kids). I thought it was an interesting choice (of both screenwriter, Michael Bacall, and writer/director, Edgar Wright).  Perhaps it was only a coincidence alcohol fuelled Scotty’s rage, but then again—and given the hilarious, insightful scene with the sanctimonious Vegan super-villain—perhaps not?

Anywho, whether or not the brains behind the big-hearted SP vs TW meant to make a statement about how alcohol can sometimes enrage normally mild-mannered folk into violent crazy-folk is beside the point, which is…

This film rocks.

And that’s coming from a completely sober armchair critic.

My name is Ben and I’m a social experiment.

☆

Little Booze Joke 66:

A roadie walks into the bar and the barman hands him a numbered list of cocktails and says, “What’ll it be?” and the roadie says, “One Two.”

How about you? Does alcohol wave the red flag at your inner raging bull?

Please leave a comment.

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Jan 15 2012
2 Comments
Booze Jokes, Effects of Abstinence, Fiction, Film & TV

Snooki Loses Booze and Loses Weight

Snooki B4 and after dumping big drinking habit

Yesterday was Day 65 of my Year Of Living Sober. It was a Saturday.

I mowed the lawns. I changed nappies. I surfed the net. If my life was a reality show you’d have to do a lot of editing to find the juicy bits. Fortunately for me (and you!) my life is not a reality show.

But Snooki’s life is a reality show.

Well, her whole life may not be on show ALL the time but a lot is. Just google ‘The Snooki’. That’s how I got to find out about her. And for those who don’t know, here’s a bit about The Snooki.

The Snooki is a gal from America who stars in reality TV show, Jersey Shore. Apparently she used to be a lot fatter bigger than she is now and she is attributing her rapid weight loss, at least in part, to cutting down her alcohol intake.

To quote THIS SITE…

“Snooki said that what helped her through it was cutting back on drinks.”

Cool.

And if The Snooki is anything like me it won’t just be the empty calories of booze she’s no longer needing to burn off (by doing whatever Jersey Shore girls do to burn off excess calories—my guess would be shopping and bonking) but the extra food one is prone to eat when drinking alcohol too.

One of the big benefits I’ve found from not drinking (of going cold turkey, of abstaining from boozing) is my appetite is no longer regularly stimulated to the equivalent of a starving speed-eater at a hot-dog smorgasboard. By not drinking beer or wine with—and before—my dinner I don’t chow down for as long or as much.

My boozefree self is a more moderate eater. To put it another way my Pissed Pig has been replaced by a Sober Savorer.

And thanks to The Snooki’s new boozing-less diet, and the world’s preoccupation with celebrity weight-loss (reports just in—Snooki’s hit 98 pounds!), girls (and boys) around the world will be exposed to the potentially life-changing knowledge that boozing less=weighing less.

As long as you don’t replace alcohol with ice-cream.

That’s reality.

My name is Ben and I’m a social experiment.

☆

Little Booze Joke 65:

Sean Connery walks into a bar and the barman says ‘Shorry, we don’t sherve your short in here.’

How about you? Do you think you eat more when you drink alcohol?

Please leave a comment.

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Jan 14 2012
8 Comments
Booze Jokes, Fiction, Film & TV

Programmed to Drink Alcohol

 

Drink! Drink! Drink!

Yesterday was Day 64 of my Year Of Living Sober. It was a Friday. Like any Friday I did some writing (mostly on my two blogs, a little on my next novel), got in a little exercise (a walk in the drizzle with my pregnant wife) and then finished the day—and week—off by doing what I often do on a Friday: I got pissed while watching television.

Wait a minute—no I didn’t.

In fact last night I didn’t have a drop of alcohol. What’s wrong with me? Why am I not with the program anymore? Oh, that’s right, I’m not drinking any booze for a whole year. I’m on a YOLS. And I’ve still got about ten months to go.

No problemo.

For me, this reprogramming hasn’t really been too difficult at all; once I decided to quit for a year, I did. As soon as I say that though, I realize maybe it has been more difficult than I think.

Maybe I would have experimented with sobriety a long time ago if it hadn’t been for a powerful force, a force working on both my conscious and subconscious self, a force of such great influence and everyday presence I couldn’t see it for the manipulative, malevolent energy it really is.

I am of course talking about…Facebook.

No, not really. I’m talking about advertising (though FB is now doing more of that than ever!) and advertising is abso-f*cking-lutely EVERYWHERE.

Television? TICK. Cinema? TICK. Mobile Advertising Platform (you might know it as a ‘Smart Phone’)? TICK.

Advertising isn’t just in between the television shows, film and ‘news’ presentations available to us all day and all night—and whether we are at home, on a plane or taking a leak at the local pub (I’m not sure if they have little video screens pumping mini-commercials in the ladies water closet but they are popping up everywhere in the gents)—it is right there in the ‘proper’ entertainment too.

I’m not sure what film, television show or ad (or combination) first led me to believe putting Stolichnaya vodka in the freezer was a ‘cool’ thing to do but I do remember beginning to think that way somewhere around my early twenties.

Someone, somewhere GOT TO ME.

I used to love pulling the bottle of syrupy Russian spirit out of the freezer and explaining to my not-so-with-it friends how this was ‘how you did it’.

Now whilst my memory of what media spokesman (or woman) first told me that was how you did it is unclear, the message most advertising for alcohol delivers is very clear:

Drinking is sexy.

What’s more, according to a medical study published January 11, 2012, in Science Translational Medicine, it makes you feel good.

“Drinking alcohol leads to the release of endorphins in areas of the brain that produce feelings of pleasure and reward.”

(N.B. Big thanks to Bron at Everyone is a Moon for emailing me the link to this booze study!)

So, I hadn’t been making it up all my life? Alcohol makes me feel good. And, since all the sexy, successful, slim and rich folk in the movies and on the idiocy box drink, it’s totally natural that I would aspire to drink the best, to drink regularly and to drink a lot.

Isn’t it?

Maybe.

But maybe it’s also totally natural for me to want to take five (or longer) from boozin up all the time. Even if my body is programmed to drink alcohol (externally by advertising stimuli; internally by a chemical reaction) maybe it is also programmed by something even more powerful than pavlovian instinct?

Maybe my body is also programmed to respond to the urgings of my soul, that part of me that gives me my humanity, that part of me that makes me more than a robot.

“Cheers!” to that part.

My name is Ben and I’m a social experiment.

☆

Little Booze Joke 64:

An advertising executive walks into a bar and the barman says, “What are you having?” and the advertising executive says, “Coke,” and the barman says, “In a glass or a bottle?” and the advertising executive says, “On a mirror.”

*read in manic voice* Oh, man that’s funny. That is SO funny. I am THE MAN! This is the campaign right here. I’ve written the copy without even trying…

How about you? What influenced you to drink a particular alcoholic beverage? Maybe it wasn’t advertising at all? Please leave a comment.

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Jan 13 2012
4 Comments
Booze Jokes, Inspiration, Metamorphisis

Straight Edge Daddy in the Night Garden

Iggle Piggle contemplates a 'near beer'

Yesterday was Day 63 of my Year Of Living Sober. It was a Thursday. And like any other day of the week I had jobs to do and responsibilities to meet. But come evening time I was ready for a drink. Unfortunately I couldn’t have one. Because, you see, I’m on a self-inflicted imposed year off drinking.

And here’s the thing: I really miss beer; I miss wine too.

There I’ve said it. I can admit to the fact my Year Of Living Sober has reminded me why I drink alcohol.

Because I love it.

Maybe not in the same way I love my wife or my daughter—or even in the same way I love the sensation of catching a wave and body-surfing all the way to shore—but I do have a soft spot for the spirited stuff (and I’m not talking about paranormal fiction).

But so what? Acknowledging my deep fondness for liquor won’t change my resolve to take a year off boozin’. I just have to frown and bear it. And though I am trying not to be too sulky about it sometimes I think my face tells a different story, a story that begins at about 6pm: baby bath time.

Lately, my wife looks at me sitting all forlorn looking on the bathroom tiles, waiting for her to finish washing our baby, and wonders out loud what’s wrong.

“Nothing,” I say. “Just thinking about my writing.”

“So you’re not feeling like a beer at all?” she might enquire perceptively.

“Maybe,” I reply. “Maybe a little.” Her expression questions my forthcomingness. “Okay, maybe a lot.”

Before I began my YOLS I’d often grab a beer when I finished my day’s writing, which was—and is—generally around the same time Honey Rose is due for her bath. Since my little girl has her bath with my big girl (my wife, Pauli) my job is to remove nappy (from Honey) and deliver naked-leg-kicking-smiley-faced cherub to her mother (who has already run a bath and climbed in). After washing bub is all done I’m responsible for retrieving Honey, drying and dressing her, and combing her hair.

All this I used to do with a beer on the go. Maybe not in my hand, but at least close to. Not anymore though. Nor do I then, once finished with the early evening baby duties, progress to a bottle of wine (invariably red), which I would still be enjoying when I’d take a break to put Honey to bed.

But these days I’ve got no alcoholic lubrication greasing the wheels of the Ninky Nonk Pinky Ponk Night Garden imaginary Daddy train; I’m a straight edge Daddy.

Okay, maybe it is easier—in a way—to do my Daddy tasks stone cold sober (and I don’t have to skip to the loo as often as my beer-drinking self did either) but if I do have a ‘danger time’, a part of the day when I most think about my not-drinking: it’s the end of the day.

By the way, I have tried a non-alcoholic red wine replacement and it’s not the same. Well it is the same: the same as vinegar mixed with fermented pigs blood. Luckily those Cooper’s non-alcoholic beers taste pretty good. Good enough to get me through a Year Of Living Sober I reckon.

My name is Ben and I’m a social experiment.

☆

Little Booze Joke 63:

How many wine tasters does it take to change a lightbulb? Two. One to change the lightbulb and another to savour the delicate yet bold—subtle yet brilliant—glow characteristic of modern craftsmanship meeting vintage methods.

How about you? Do you fancy a beer or a wine—or something stronger at the end of the day? Are you a domestic multi-tasker too? Please leave a comment.

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