Alcohol ban

This week I will mostly be not drinking alcohol.

I’ve not had any alcohol since Saturday, and I plan to go without until Friday evening. In a normal week I like to have two or, preferably, three days without the stuff so as not to ‘overload’ my system. Of late I’ve not been having those days of abstinence. Hence it’s time to stop.

I firmly believe that it is not good for the body to consume alcohol every single day. I’m convinced that having some days without helps to detoxify the body. I suppose that it could be argued that having booze everyday helps preserve the body in a pickling sort of way, but I’m not prepared to risk that approach.

This week is not going to be easy as I’m partial to the odd glass of beer, as you may well know. I blog about real ale, and it certainly helps if you can drink the stuff. If nothing else it acts as inspiration.

My self-imposed booze ban is down to the fact that I’ve consumed rather too much recently and I’ve noticed my waistline disappearing under the dreaded beerus gutti.

Down with middle-age spread!

Mint Monday in Mustard City

As the train approached Norwich station last night the carriage was filled with the effluvia of mint.

Guess what sort of sauce Coleman's were making yesterday?

Accident

As I was walking from the train station to work this morning, I came upon an accident. It was on the main road, in front of the trading estate that I work on. As I reached the scene the ambulance was arriving. It was hard to make out what had happened. Some poor soul was lying on the path, with another citizen crouched over him. In the road there was a two car shunt. A car, not sure what make, had run into the back of a Rover. Not wishing to intrude into other people’s misery I carried on walking, rather than stopping to gawp. It was not clear if the person lying on the ground was a pedestrian, a cyclist, or passenger in one of the cars. I suspect the former, but it’s so easy to jump to wrong conclusions. My immediate thought when seeing the Rover was that the accident was probably caused be the driver being the obligatory dozy fucker one needs to be when driving this make. And despite wearing tracksuit bottoms the injured bloke (I do hope he wasn’t badly hurt) is somebody’s loved-one, be it son, father, brother, husband or lover.

This comes on the day of the funeral of the daughter of a work colleague. She was killed in a car accident.

Events like this make you stop and think about your own life. Well they do for me. It brings home the fragility and precarious nature of life. It makes me reassess how I treat those around me. How I live my life. How I should do more to confront my own prejudices. The trouble is that for me, these feelings will no doubt fade, as they usually do, after a relatively short time. If only I could distil the compassion and appreciation that I currently feel, and place it in a phial. A phial to hang around my neck, to act as a reminder about the person I should be, and to use in times of need.

A thought

”It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our team members and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue.”

I don't know who originally said it, but I received this quotation last week in an email from the CEO of our parent company. I'll leave it with you.

Communication breakdown

Isn’t e-mail a wonderful thing?

I’ve just received a reply to an e-mail I had sent to someone supporting them as they had asked me to do. They have replied rebuking me!

I’m confused, we are probably now both aggrieved, and neither of us probably knows why. The written word is my preferred form of making contact with people but it is oh so hard to make yourself understood without the emphasis and inflections that the spoken word affords.

It’s Monday morning and life seems far too complicated!

(K)nickers off ready when I come home

You might have noticed that I’ve somewhat neglected this blog over the last few months. Life’s been quite hectic so something had to give, and this blog has been a casualty. I have been blogging, but only over on my RealAleBlog.

A couple of months ago we move to Norwich, a very fine city even though it is in Norfolk, and we are most certainly enjoying living there. Moving from a market town to the big city broadens one’s horizons, opening up a whole new world of choice. Norwich has an Arts Centre as well as an Arts Cinema. Masses of music events and more pubs than you can shake a stick at. Culture by the bucket full! I just hope that we can find time to avail ourselves of all these facilities. Something else that I’m not used to, and still can’t get over, is the fact that you have two or three of certain chain stores or restaurants. Having moved I am now able to go to work by train. A double edged sword if ever there was one. So it’s been change, change, change in the Of-Course household.

Life’s a bitch

“Life’s a bitch and then you die", so the saying goes. Being someone that has been blessed with a lot of luck in his life, most of it bad, I have always found that two of the most important things to help you cope with the shit that comes your way are music and humour. No, make that three things, music, humour and the love of a good woman. Cancel that! Four things, music, humour, the love of a good woman and beer.

Out of those four the one that bemuses a lot of people is humour, and how when I’m seemingly reeling in the feculence of my or someone else’s latest disaster, I can often find something to laugh about. It’s my way of coping. Basically life is absurd, so why be miserable about it?

The Monty Python song Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life is a great little ditty to sing to yourself to remind you that perhaps life might not be as bad as it seems. If it gets to the point where you can’t stand the song going round in your head then replace it with Ian Dury’s panacea Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll. Sorted!

Laugh while you can. You are a long time dead!