Saturday February 10 - From No Booze To No Blues

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been one month, nine days and 14 hours since my last drink.

Had my first beer of 2007 last night. Alcohol-free, natch. It had been in my fridge since early January but, to be honest, I was terrified of drinking it. My fear was two-fold.

1. I believed that drinking a fake beer would be too hard a task for a recovering social alcoholic. To feel the comforting weight of the ice-cold bottle in my hand, to hear that glorious hiss-and-tinkle as the top is released and hits the counter, to sense the first wave of amber nectar wash over my tongue. (Hiss and tinkle? Amber wave? God, I sound like a water sports fetishist.)
I was terrified that drinking something so close and yet so far to beer could prompt a relapse.
How embarrassing would that be - to be tipped over the edge by an alcohol-free beer? That would be like Keith Richards surviving 40 years of hard drug abuse, then being found dead in his hotel room surrounded by empty bottles of Calpol and Junior Disprin.

2. I was fairly sure it would taste like piss.

I'm happy to report that I was wrong on both counts. The Cobra 0.0% looks like a beer, tastes like a beer and - judging by how sweet it tastes - can give you a gut like a beer. It did not, however, cause me to smash open the nearest drinks cabinet and hook up a bottle of Smirnoff to an IV drip.
It did make me want to go for a curry, though. So I did. There is something quite perverse about eating curry at 7.30pm. It feels slightly wrong - like if you haven't spent the previous six hours drinking, then you haven't really earned the right.

It was all very civilised, though, and we were back by 9pm, which gave us plenty of time to enjoy some Friday night TV. Now there's something to make me want to smash open the drinks cabinet.

Today has been a frustrating day so far, and proof that staying off the alcohol does not necessarily improve one's lucidity of thinking.

I hauled myself out of bed at 9am and decided - against my better judgement - to drive to Birmingham to watch Blues v Stoke (midday kick-off). Now, this is not a great idea at the best of times, unless you enjoy the spectacle of diabolical football, more fake Burberry than a Hong Kong rag market and an influx of knuckle-dragging Stokie half-wits so moronic they make the Blues faithful look like a Mensa conference. Now, add to that the prospect of heavy snow, sleet and horrible traffic. I should have stayed in bed, but decided to show my true Blue colours by making the journey.

Having reached the ground in a respectable two hours, I realised I should have shown my true Blue colours by actually READING THE SODDING FIXTURE LIST. The match kicks off tomorrow.

One U-turn, many cuss words and more than two hours later, I'm back home, writing this blog and feeling like a darned fool.

Oh well, could be worse. I could be from Stoke.