Teetotally sober!

Yesterday’s lunch was lovely. My headache started before I was half way through the welcome glass of champagne, so I didn’t need huge amounts of will power to avoid the booze.

Still, we had a fire break out on our table which was pretty exciting. No, I’m not joking: a piece of cracker debris spontaneously combusted on our table, making quite a table decoration for several seconds. It’s a sad state of affairs when one’s first reaction is ‘Is there time to get my camera out so I can blog this?’ Really, I’ve got to get a life.

Carol and Caroline helped me build the grotto. Then, as I was ‘on duty’ as one of the ‘meet and greet’ team, I showed the ladies where to put their charity gifts in the ball room. Finally, I herded women toward Father Christmas to pick up their Christmas presents.

We appealed to all lunch guests to bring Christmas presents for the Karen Refugee children from Burma/Myanmar, living in the Mae La Camp and students at the Thai Noh Bo School. We had a fantastic result and Christ Church, Bangkok, will take the gifts to the children. It always makes me a bit weepy to see people’s generosity.

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?