Tragedy

I’ve discovered that I can’t write after a night out. I promise that this isn’t more procrastination. Something about feeling jaded (either from alcohol or by being short of sleep) means I can’t get down to the business of writing.

I’m not talking about getting steaming drunk either – I’m talking about having a night out with some alcohol. Three bottles of beer I had last night, and not only did I wake up with a headache, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything today. I did a bit of research, but I had to have a sleep this afternoon just to get through the day.

What does this mean? That if I want to write a book, alcohol and I have to part company?

In truth I think we should go our different ways: it seems to poison me. It doesn’t matter what I drink, even in small quantities I feel dreadful the next day. Slowly I’m cutting the different poisons off my list. First to go was red wine, years ago (migraine BEFORE I’d finished the glass); Thai beer gives me wild dreams and hangovers; the lovely cream bitter they brew in the Londoner Pub gives me ferocious headaches; all wine is heavily taxed so any white wine I drink is usually on the cheap end of the scale, which results in – yup, you guessed it – a banging headache.

So that leaves me with gin. Gin and I have been good mates for many years, however the week before last I went out with husband and two visiting colleagues, and I horribly, but horribly over-indulged with gin.

So if gin gets knocked off the list I don’t know where that leaves me.

Sober, but 100,000 words richer?

Wine is weepy making

After such a good day on Wednesday (a good day is defined by actually writing, as opposed to thinking, playing Bejeweled, playing Tetris, answering emails, reading and in which numbers of words increase) I was really hoping that I wouldn’t get a last minute ticket to the International Women’s Day Lunch which was being organized by the Australian and New Zealand Women’s Group here in Bangkok.

But a ticket came up so I had to go along. I had to drink all that champagne; and then all the wine. It would have been rude to refuse.

I think International Women’s Day is a good thing to celebrate. I like women. And I like the camaraderie that we women give to each other. The novel race is a great demonstration of that: when we confess to being wobbly, doubting and down in the dumps, we get left comments by fellow racers, reassuring us, cheering us on and generally being lovely.

It’s true that women are also among the nastiest of enemies, and two faced and positively bitchy, but I’m not going to dwell on that because I’m not in that kind of mood.

I think wine makes me weepy. Or maybe voluminous quanities of wine makes me weepy. Gin on the other hand doesn’t appear to do this, which is odd, given its reputation as mother’s ruin and a depressive. I'm going to try to remember wine is bad...

So today, feeling a little hungover, instead of writing I had date with a big packet of Maltesers and The Queen at the cinema.