White wine spritzer? I’m not sure what happened to me in Venice, but a party on Saturday saw me drink only a few white wine spritzers. A drink as alien to me as a pint of onion and tripe. My faithful companion had left me, my thirst had gone – my lust for booze had evaporated – maybe the nuns in Venice had put some kind of spell on me the previous week. Come to think of it, I ended up carrying beer back from Venice as I couldn’t stomach it in the convent I had slept in. Maybe I was ill.
The Saturday party conversation turned to the human body and its lack of regenerative capacity after the age of 35. At this pronunciation, all eyes turned inwardly, as people figured out how much more abuse they could subject themselves to. How many days they had left to enjoy. Luckily I had a liquid Sunday planned with a robust and unsinkable drinking partner who was sure to get me back off the straight and narrow in Camden.
But it was not meant to be. Another sign – she lost her phone – we could not meet, and Sunday too was dry. Maybe my liver had ganged up with god, and had made some anti-faustian pact with its maker to keep me from alcohol. Remorseful at a lost Sunday’s drinking, one of only two hundred before my body was due to really start to rot, I tried to make some vodka jelly. Always comes in useful – one thing you should always carry in your freezer – something to slip down the throat like an unromantic oyster. Again, I was denied – this time I was burnt by superheated jelly fresh from the microwave, before the vodka bottle was even uncorked. The shock sent molten jelly all over the kitchen – the project had to be abandoned, the vodka was left unswallowed.
I have til the fourteenth of this month to regain my booze-drive. People will travel from all over the UK to see me drink at my “farewell to London” party. I’ve even got a best man for the wedding to the rest of my life. This is a crisis. I’m getting jittery before I even get to the alter. I have some soul searching to do, and only five days to do it…