alcohol

I really do not like alcohol. It is the insidoius nature of the stuff, the way it lowers my inhibitions so I feel more relaxed and typically have a better or more fun time, especially in a room full of strangers. I know I will feel like shit the next morning. Not always like a steaming pile of turds, sometimes more the nagging need-to-go-soon shit that just irritates you. The feeling like shit, even the gorilla-dump days that, I hope, are now all in my past are never so bad that you feel you'll never recover. Even the time when I could not even keep water down the following day I knew it would pass. So you know you'll be back. And the social acceptability of it. I really don't like the stuff. I don't like the foggy and more vague than my usual vague self ness. I ache. It did not effect me like this in the past and I cannot remember if I suffered a gradual decline in my ability to recover or it was, say, May 17th 2001 that my brain and body decided that the effort involved in protecting me from myself was too much and fuck it, you can suffer. And so it is this morning, probably a little worse for having under the 7.5hrs sleep I find to be about right. Foggy. Need a poo. Feeling grey.

I am back off of the wagon for the Christmas period, free to have the odd beer or wine. Last night that was in Concord West for Lucy's birthday. Lucy, an Aussie globe trotter Sal used to share a flat with, is back in Sydney for Christmas and dinner was at her folks home with half of her family and that was still a large gathering. The most noteworthy thing for this blog, dear reader, is Lucy's father Richard's beer and wine room. The man is a multi-award winning brewer and whatever you call a bloke that makes wine - vintner? Can't remember and can't be bothered right now to look it up. His drinks fridge, if you can call it that, is a thing to behold. It looks like the bits you get in a pub before you get to the tidied up bar-top pumps. All tubes and pipes and cylinders ad guages. I had a glass of Old, a dark beer that was very nice. Indeed. Rumour has it that the pilsner and light beers - another two or three - were also very nice. And then I tried his wine.

The wine is incredible. He buys half a ton of red grapes a year and from that, Roger and couple of mates produce over 400 bottles. Each year. Of red. From grapes to bottles all done at home. White grapes are tougher to handle - they oixidise more readily, a bit like a bruise on an apple or a potato - and therefore he has the already crushed white grape juice delivered. A further 100 bottles of white are produced from that. He was explaining acidity and tanins and the feel of a wine form the front to the back of the mouth and how he likes ot compare his produce with that of the 'proper' producers. I was gobsmacked.

I need to give a shout out to mum, Kitty, who did the evening's food. The summer pudding - berries, sugar, lemon juice and white bread - was a thing of beauty. And the gathered masses were a good bunch of lads and lasses right the way up to granny, whose birhtday it was too.