Ok so today I'm really struggling. I have loads of "work" to do in order to get paid but I don't have the energy to do it. So instead, I'm allowing myself to get sidetracked. Birds seem to be my distraction today. While at the laundromat (washing machine died on the weekend) my car suddenly had a new bonnet ornament. Then while sitting here procrastinating, a kingfisher sits right outside my window (excuse the dirty windows - on the never ending "to do" list).

I think I picked up in my teens that drinking was something the rough kids, who I was scared of and therefore respected, was a cool thing to do and that drinking too much was the entire point of the exercise. This went badly wrong at various points in my teens. In middle age onwards, drinking has been three or four beers a few times a week, with more on a weekend to “celebrate”. On social occasions with freely accessible alcohol, by the end of the evening, I’ll have told everyone in the room that I love them, done my patented squirrel dance, danced with a pretty lady who I picked her up over my shoulder, and told very rude jokes to any audience unwise enough to be in the vicinity. Sometimes I’d wake up in the sofa the next day to discover that my wife had drawn on me with a magic marker pen. I decided that for my daughter’s wedding reception, I wouldn’t drink so as not to be an embarrassment, but there was a free bar (we had paid for it…), so I tried all the beer, told lots of stupid stories, did the squirrel dance and zig-zagged back to our hotel afterwards. Apparently, two years later, her friends keep telling her what a hilarious dad she has, so it worked out ok, apart from the near fatal hangover the next day. Even the non-hooligan drinking adds up to a weekly total that the doc disapproves of, so after New Year’s Eve and two bottles of wine (each) with my wife, I decided to do Dry January. I’m still on Dry January and it’s mid May now. Funnily enough, I don’t feel as better as all the articles I read say I should. I haven’t lost much weight, my sleep is generally rubbish (I blame the dog in part, because he doesn’t want to fall asleep and wakes up very early), my bicycle isn’t going any faster than it used to and I’m probably nearly as depressed as I used to be. Enough alcohol to feel slightly fuzzy calms my brain and makes my jokes funnier, but it’s not great waking up at 3am regretting my life’s choices. In the plus side, not drinking a dozen bottles of beer a week saves around £100 a month, and I must in some intangible way be healthier.