T-2. Today was the 45th wedding anniversary of the in-laws and so we were all invited round for lunch to celebrate with them. This is always a boozy occasion…lunch round theirs I mean, not just for the celebration. Everyone...
T-2.
Today was the 45th wedding anniversary of the in-laws and so we were all invited round for lunch to celebrate with them. This is always a boozy occasion…lunch round theirs I mean, not just for the celebration. Everyone was there drinking beer or wine with the meal. Then the cakes come out and they open a spumante. After the coffee there is a glass or 2 of amaro or limoncello…and I carried on drinking water…oh and at one point I really pushed the boat out and had a cup of Earl Grey green tea. Rock n’ Roll!!!! Keith Richards would be proud of me.
Only one more full day to go and one more blog to write and that’s me done for this year. I’m definitely going to do it again next year as the time has passed really quickly and I do think it’s beneficial to the body to have a break from booze.
I’m going back to the UK in October and I’m under strict instructions to NOT be dry. I won’t say I’m feeling pressured but I will say that I’m a lot more confident in having an alcohol-free beer in between the normal beers. Or just having water when we go out midweek for a pizza. Maybe I don’t miss feeling groggy in the morning. Maybe I like the fact that I look and feel less bloated. I’m definitely loving the fact that when the bill comes I pay €10 less every time.
The amount of times I’ve been out with a budget that gets blown to smithereens about half way into the night and the cash card comes out. We’ve all been there. The next day you check your bank balance and can’t actually believe you spent that much money! Or you probably lost a banknote in the toilet or in the street somewhere (funny how you lose notes but you never find any!) or can’t actually remember what you spent that amount of money on.
At a certain point in my life I stopped taking a bag out with me. The times I used to go to the loo, place the bag on top of the bin or loo roll holder and forget about it. I learned not to take cards out either, only cash in my pockets. Then notes would fall out all over the place when I pulled out the cash to pay for a drink. I then tried putting different amounts in different pockets, then the next day do a kind of treasure hunt to see if I had any hidden £10 notes anywhere to get a McDonalds with to soak up the booze and cure the hangover…even though it would usually make it worse. What a mess!!!
The first time I met my boyfriend we were out with mutual friends and he said to me later that he noticed I was different and not like ‘normal’ girls because I didn’t have a handbag, everything was in my pockets. Now I have ONE handbag which is the smallest ever and he makes me take it out with me because he puts HIS crap in it! Bloody cheek!
One downside to not having a bag is that I used to carry my phone in my backburner. I can’t tell you how many times I went to the toilet and forgot it was there. Needless to say that every phone I’ve had has, at some point in its short life, has been down the pan.
One such incident happened at a mini funky dance festival I went to with a friend. We had been drinking all day and had a small 2 (wo)man tent to crash out in afterwards. The evening was kicking off and we were bouncing around happy as Larry. Of course, at these type of outdoor raves there are always porta-loos. You know the ones with the blue chemical liquid at the bottom and hole you do your business in. They stink, they are filthy, there’s never any toilet paper…and my phone ended up in there.
It was dark at this point and I heard the ‘spladooosh’ before I had even done anything so I knew straight away. Hoping to dear god this wasn’t the case I asked my friend to phone it. It was off, she said. Only it wasn’t…it had fallen into the blue, shitty, pissy chemical water that about 100 people had used that day. My friend, bless her, was too drunk to see reason and instantly plunged her hand into the water to fish around for it. She pulled out the phone along with bog roll attached to it and blue water, and only hell knows what else, up to the elbow.
I dragged her to the bar…keeping her, literally, at arms length and asked the barman to hose her arm off and put the phone into a glass of clean water. I really did not want that phone next to my ear or anywhere near my face after that but I thought that it was such a lovely gesture that I didn’t have the heart to tell her.
I had insurance on the phone anyway and I rang up whoever the provider was at the time and I told them I had lost it. But do you know that the phone actually worked again!!! Incredible but true. They don’t make them like that any more. Good ol’ Nokia was indestructible. Once one fell in my tea, with milk and sugar, and still worked after. So there you have it. DON’T put your phone in your back pocket and if it ends up in a porta-loo for god’s sake leave it there – if it’s not a Nokia, that is.
