Friday March 30 - Black Is The New Crack

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been two months, 29 days and 17 hours since my last drink.

Two more nights in the pub this week, and still no booze.

I am, however, getting quite concerned about the effects of too much blackcurrant cordial.

I drank about three pints of it while watching England v Andorra on Wednesday night, and was buzzing all night. I couldn't even sleep, despite the England team's best efforts to send the nation into a coma.

Watched the match at a pub called The Vines, on Smithdown Road, which is OK but just that bit rougher than my usual haunts. It was by no means unfriendly, but the gentrificometer reading (which is calculated according to the ratio of natural to man-made fibres, aka 'the linen trouser count') did plummet.

Maybe it's my own snobbery, but the less salubrious a joint is, the less comfortable I feel about my teetotalitarianism. Particularly when my drink of choice is a big glass of purple fizz, with a stirrer and a straw.

The Vines was certainly not used to non-drinkers. I asked for a soda and black, and the barman merrily poured me a cider and black. I did not notice but, rather worryingly, my mate Jimmy watched him do it and simply assumed that not only was I about to break my solemn vow of sobriety, but I was going to do so with a drink favoured by teenage girls.

Anyway, the following night I went for a quick drink after work with Graham. We went to the Tavern (I'm boycotting the Penny Lane Wine Bar due to their inflated blackcurrant prices - how dare they profiteer from my addiction?) and I found myself getting quite tetchy at the bar while waiting for the sweet hit of blackcurrant. Like a user waiting for his next hit.

No wonder those Ribena berries always look like they are having such a good time - they're off their faces.

Oh well. At least coming off the cordial will give me a good project for 2008.

Monday March 26 - BST Makes Me Want To Get PSD

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been two months, 25 days and 17 hours since my last drink.

The clocks went forward yesterday, and spring is most definitely in the air.

This spells potential disaster for a recovering SA like me. I can already sense a long hot summer of sipping halves of foaming ale on the village green, to the sound of birdsong and the unmistakable thwack of leather on willow.

OK, so it's possibly more like chugging multiple pints of cheap lager on the Dovedale Towers carpark, to the sound of car alarms and the unmistakable thwack of scally football on pensioner's window.

It's still fun, though. Driving straight to the pub after work and drinking outside for a few hours, shifting your position so you get the last of the sun's rays, is one of the great pleasures in life for the honest, working man. And for me.

Yes, I know I can still go and have a soft drink, but it's just not the same. I'll miss out, for example, on that wonderful moment of both elation and self-defeat, when you shuffle up to the barman to double check they won't be locking the carpark overnight, as you know full well you'll be coming back to collect it at 7.30am the next day. The Social Alcoholic's equivalent of a young lady's "walk of shame" following a night spent unexpectedly at the home of a "new gentleman friend".

This weekend was not too testing, for a change. I was on call, which meant that I wouldn't have been able to drink much anyway.

We stayed in on Friday night and went to Stockport on Saturday for dinner with some of Gem's uni friends.

Naively, I was expecting to be palmed off with a mug of orange squash. I should have known better. Anyone who has a dovecot in their back garden is bound to put on a better show than that. Emma provided me with a chilled bottle of Tesco finest Elderflower presse. Posh pop, basically, but it comes in a proper wine bottle, with a wine-style label. It even looks like wine.

It was perfect for me, and will also serve as a great way of getting kids softened up to become the Social Alcoholics of tomorrow.

My otherwise fantastic hosts very nearly gaffed by serving me a dessert with rum in it. Gemma, pragmatic as ever, suggested the best solution to the problem was not to tell me. Thankfully, Emma respected my purity, and provided me with an individually-cased, booze-free chocolate eclair.

After the posh pop and the eclair, the third most exciting highlight of the night was the appearance of baby Millie, who was born six weeks ago (to Jimmy and Katie) and is the first child in any of our friendship circles.

She was very cute, very well-behaved, and her parents did not hijack every conversation with tales of bowel movements, dilated vaginas and swollen breasts - even though that sums up most of our dinner party conversations over the last ten years, anyway.

However, their understandable early exit (caused by exhaustion) did make me wonder if this booze-free experiment is such a good idea.
Hopefully, me and Gem will have kids of out own in the next few years, when it seems my social life will inevitably expire.

This could be one of my last years of freedom and I am wasting it by remaining sober. How depressing. I think I'd better crack open a bottle of Elderflower presse and get pretend pissed to cheer myself up.

Thursday March 22 - Waxing On About Brazilians

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been two months, 21 days and 17 hours since my last drink.

Had to knock back some more free booze today. Not knock back as in glug glug glug, obviously. Knock back as in politely refuse. Knock back as in 'Meh meh, meh meh meh'. Knock back as in 'no thanks, I've set myself a moronic challenge and I've come too far to turn back'.

Satan came to me this time in the form of a very nice PR woman, called Lisa. She invited me to a trendy restaurant called Meat, which serves a lot of, er, meat, for the launch party of the Brazilian beer, Brahma. Free food, free Brahma, samba dancers a-plenty and more beautiful Brazilians than the Metropolitan Police Firearms Unit could mow down in an entire morning of target practice.

Beef, beer and Brazilians. The holy trinity. And I had to turn it down.

Yes, I know I could have gone along and stayed sober. But I'm English, for heaven's sake. I'm uptight and repressed. It's bad enough being uptight and repressed in a room full of partying English people - who are themselves merely taking a temporary, alcohol-induced break from being uptight and repressed. But Brazilians? With their smiling and their dancing and their shaven havens waggling around? No, siree. Not on my watch.

It's a double shame I can't - or won't - go, because I've had a day off today. I'm not skiving. It's an official day off in lieu, as I'm working this weekend.

Working at weekends is by far the worst thing about my job. It does, however, have one saving grace: getting drunk on a week night.

There are few things able to generate such an inner-glow of smugness as sitting in a pub, getting slowly plastered, knowing that those around you will be nursing sore heads and dry tongues in the office tomorrow, while you lounge around at home in your pants.

Oh dear, got a morning appointment, have you? Yeah, me too. (With the Jeremy Kyle Show, you sucker!)

Sadly, that small ray of light has also been doused by this challenge.

Anyway, I still went to the pub last night. Penny Lane Wine Bar again. Had a pretty good time, as it goes. We spoke about the budget, which was yesterday. Gordon Brown announced that the price of a pint of beer will go up, yet again.

Surprise surprise. He always targets the drinkers. Probably because they are too drunk to notice. It doesn't really bother me, for obvious reasons. I listened pretty hard to see if he mentioned anything about hiking the price of soda and blackcurrant, but I don't think he did.

Not that that will stop the highwaymen who run the Penny Lane Wine Bar. Yes, it's still £1.50 for a pint of squash, and I'm still upset about it.

Anyway, it was nice to wake up this morning without the traditional day off hangover. My physical and mental freshness enabled me to spend the day watching cable TV, playing golf and preparing a sumptuous meal. (Bolognaise bap. Microwave yesterday's cold bolognaise for two minutes, pour into slightly stale roll, serve on a plate garnished with cheese Quavers, eat while watching Deal Or No Deal)

God, I can't believe I used to waste my life drinking. I was such a loser!!

Sunday March 18 - Thirsty Thirty

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been two months, 17 days and 19 hours since my last drink.

OK, I'm slightly concerned about this project, as the novelty may be wearing off.

One month without booze: a painful yet gratifying period of purification.

Two months without booze: a chance to really challenge myself and test the outer limits of my will power and self discipline.

Nearly three months without booze: Just crap.

I no longer crave alcohol. I yearn for it.

I yearn for it like a lovesick teenager. I think about it, I dream about it, I want to write a soppy poem about it. Dammit, I'm this close to sticking a photo of a pint onto my school bag - sorry, briefcase - with WB 4 Booze 4 Eva IDST scrawled next to it.

Perhaps that is why my fantasies about alcohol (yes, I'm afraid I do have them) seem to reverberate to my youth.
In these reveries, I am not sipping champagne in swish bars or even a cold Guinness in the Penny Lane.
No, I am 16 again, holding a foaming pint of bitter in a backstreet Digbeth boozer with sticky floors and the unmistakeable whiff of TCP in the air.

God, you know your brain is messed up when you are eulogising a night in the Old Wharf.

Friday night was bearable. I stayed in but had the foresight to avoid watching Comic Relief like the plague (no pun intended), as I knew the sight of Lenny Henry being zany would have me ripping the top off a whisky bottle faster than Dawn French has the foil off her first Chocolate Orange of the morning.

Saturday, however, was much harder, as it involved yet another traditional drinking event: the 30th birthday party.

Thirtieth birthday parties are strange events, anyway. They seem to announce that your social life has turned full circle. Think about it. Your first birthday party almost certainly involved you lying there, blissfully unaware, quietly soiling yourself while your older relatives enjoyed a buffet.

You spent the next 29 years trying to evolve the experience. First came the clown and cake parties, then trips to Alton Towers or the zoo, then McDonalds and the cinema. Perhaps you were one of those sophisticates who pulled out all the stops and were allowed to take eight friends to Lazer Zone followed by Pizza Hut. (There's one 27th birthday I'll never forget.)

Then, when you hit 30, you decide the best plan is to invite all those old relatives back for another buffet. And if you time your drinking badly, they may well end up enjoying it once again while you lie there, blissfully unaware, slowly soiling yourself.

As it happens, this party had all the requisite ingredients. Good venue, nice people, tasty buffet. And Nicky, the birthday girl, timed her drinking to perfection. Drunk enough to enjoy herself, not so drunk as to...(I think that's enough soil talk).

What I really wanted, however, was a proper drink. Because although I had a nice time, what I really wanted was a drunk time. I wanted to talk crap and dance badly and stay up late. Why? Because that's what parties are about.

I went home at around 12.30am. Not a bad effort, but I watched with envy as Gary, Gregg, Graham, Ali and others went on to the after-party, at Nicky's flat. For me, the night was over. For them, it was just hotting up. And that's why drinking is fun.

Ho hum. Only another 288 days to go. I'm sure they'll fly by.

PS. Took my mum out for Mothers' Day today. Went to a restaurant which was very Solihull. All pastels and pelmets and Forever Friends statuettes lining the window sills. I thought mum might not be allowed in as she wasn't wearing gold shoes. Food was good but my premier dessert choice (blackforest gateau, natch) was scuppered, due to its alcohol content. I am a slave to this project.

Thursday March 15 - All The President's Gin

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been two months, 14 days and 17 hours since my last drink.

I'm gagging for a pint and it's all the President of Ghana's fault.

There's a sentence I never thought I'd write.

What happened was this. I woke up, full of the joys of spring, only to have my mood darkened when I checked in with the newsdesk and was told to arrange an interview with John Kufuor, the President of Ghana, who is currently on a state visit to the UK.

Now, I have nothing against John Kufuor in himself. I'm sure he's a smashing fella, who thoroughly deserves his nickname of "the gentle giant" (a moniker usually reserved for large, friendly, slightly retarded people, often from East Anglia, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt).

However, from years of bitter experience, I know that reporting on high-profile visits by royalty and heads of state is invariably a painful and fruitless experience.

First, you have to deal with legions of jumped-up government press officers, who strut around with their official clipboards and shoulder bags like the overgrown milk monitors they are.

Then you have the local hosts and officials - decent enough folk who are sent into a temporary frenzy by the smell of fresh paint and the promise of a fancy biscuit.

Then you have the groupies. That assorted rag bag of Royal-watchers, party loyalists, loonies, pensioners and the unemployable, who turn out to wave flags, shake hands (with people who will happily exploit such loyalty and shaft them at every opportunity) and generally get in my way.

Then, worst of all, you have to cope with the pure futility of the exercise. Such hassle would not be so bad if these events ever produced a decent story. But they don't. The dignitaries invariably turn up, mouth platitudes, unveil a plaque, then bugger off. Who wants to read about that - particularly when it is competition with riveting news stories like what Liz Hurley wore last night, or another picture of Britney Spears' beaver?

But today was different, they told me. John Kufuor's people had been in touch, they said. He was very keen to speak to us, apparently, and was willing to give a one-to-one interview.

Yeah, right.

A dozen phone calls, several wasted trips, one rain-soaked suit and four hours later, I watched with resignation as the Gentle Giant was whisked away in a ministerial Rolls Royce, without so much as a sideways glance at the chump from Her Majesty's Press.

I had been duped by wily Ghanaians. Lured to their crappy photo-call and bun-fight on the promise of an interview that was clearly never going to happen.

So, John Kufuor, if you're reading, I hope you're happy. You may well have created one of the strongest democracies in Africa, and overseen the first peaceful transition of power since independence from Britain in 1957, but you've very nearly driven this Social Alcoholic to drink.

Hang your head in shame, Sir.

Off to the pub now, for the third night in a row. Last night I was in Manchester, saying hello to a former colleague who left to work in LA and is back in Blighty for a week. The night before, I was in the Coffee House with Gary, Gregg and Cardy. Tonight it'll be the Penny Lane Wine Bar. Again.

See, I told you I go to the pub a lot.

Sunday March 11 - Cash'n'Curry

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been two months, ten days and 21 hours since my last drink.

The danger of ridding ourselves of one addiction is that we replace it with another.

Elton John, for example, kicked his cocaine habit but turned to bulimia.
Jack Osborne also beat drug addiction (he wasn't quite as hardcore as dad Ozzy - I think he was caning Junior Disprin or Calpol or something) but is now hooked on extreme sports.
Fortunately, Robbie Williams is no longer hooked on cocaine and alcohol. Unfortunately, he is now addicted to coffee, fags, sleeping pills, self-pity and making terrible, terrible records. God, I miss coked-up Robbie.

I thought I had escaped the perils of displacement addiction. Alas, I may have thunk too soon. I strongly suspect that I may have replaced the crutch of alcohol with a double crutch: Curry and Cash. Don't worry, I'm not about to confess to some sick 1980s-based fantasy involving ex-Tory egg-spurner turned steamy novellist Edwina Curry and crowd-climbing Wimbledon champ Pat Cash. Although there's a thought...

No, I mean I have become desperate to eat curry and spend cash.

For the curry part, I blame my fellow Blues season-ticket holders. Last Sunday they mentioned, in passing, that we might go for a curry after the Birmingham-Derby game on Friday night. To them, it was a throwaway line. To me, it was a lifeline. Curry may not get you drunk but - if you choose the right one - it does make you sweat, swear, cry, vomit and wake up in the morning with aching guts and a strong sense of regret. For a man without drink, it is the next best thing. To add to the realism of the pub experience, curry is generally consumed in hot, smoky dives with bad decor and a faint sense of menace. Perfect.

Alas, after Friday night's match, the curry plan appeared to have been forgotten faster than a politician's promise. Some of the group cried off sick, and the rest were happy to celebrate Blues' 1-0 victory by sinking pints in The Old Crown (which is supposed to be the oldest building in Birmingham, and comes complete with inflatable pints of Guinness hanging from the rafters, just like they had in ye olden dayes).
To be fair, it was good fun. My only slight issue came when I ordered a coffee. To reflect my staunch heterosexuality, I was hoping for a mug, preferably chipped. Instead, I was presented with a delicate little tray, complete with a silver coffee pot, a small milk jug and tiny pot of sugar.
Drinking coffee in a post-match football boozer is bad enough, without being made to feel like you should be wearing white gloves, a frilly dress and inviting all your dolls and teddies around for a tea party.

I drove back to Liverpool in the wee hours of Saturday and tried to forget about curry. Anyone who has ever grieved, however, will know that the sense of loss is never too far from the surface. You try to go about your business as normal, but just a waft of garlic can set you off.

A few hours ago, I cracked and went for a cheeky rogan josh down the road. Now I feel unsettled, disappointed and certain that I'll have a bad night's sleep. In other words, like any other Sunday after a weekend of alcohol abuse. See, I told you curry was the next best thing.

My other displacement addiction - spending cash - I blame on nobody but myself.
I'll spare you the gory details, but let's just say that Gemma and I went to the Wirral today for nothing more than a nice walk along the promenade at New Brighton.
Somehow, I returned with a very shiny set of golf clubs. As a displacement activity for boozing, this is ideal. Not only did spending the money give me a similarly giddy feeliing to drinking, but if I were to describe my new clubs, I could be as crushingly dull as any boozed-up bar fly.

So I won't.

Oh, OK then, it's basically a set of steel-shafted, cavity-backed Adams, but the three and four irons are hybrids, which are a lot more forgiving if you're....

Thursday March 8 - Help! I Need Some Money

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been two months, seven days and 20 hours since my last drink.

Went to the Penny Lane Wine Bar to unwind yesterday after a particularly unpleasant and stressful day.

Ordered a pint of soda water and blackcurrant. Guess how much. Go on, guess.

ONE POUND FIFTY!

One pound fifty for a glug of cordial and some carbonated water.

For that sort of money, I want it served by Sir Paul himself.

To add insult to injury, I had to drink it in the poky room at the back, where one table of fellow drinkers looked suspiciously like gentlemen of the road and apparently everyone was smoking cheap foreign fags. Now I know how a kipper feels.

Oh well, the things we put up with so we can drink in a gaff with a link to the Beatles.

They were from Liverpool, you know. Not a lot of people know that.

Wednesday March 7 - A Special Brew night at Anfield

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been two months, six days and 18 hours since my last drink.

If you'd told me three months ago that I could sit at Anfield, among 40,000 jubilant Liverpool fans in full 'God's chosen people' mode, without a fortifying drink, I'd have choked on my Bovril.

Don't get me wrong. Some of my best friends are Liverpool fans. But, like a grumpy old shopkeeper with a 'three schoolchildren at a time' notice, I can only abide them in small numbers.

Aside from anything else, if you put more than three in the same room, they'll insist on doing one of those cardboard 'mosaics'. Or at least pass around a giant flag.

Part of my resentment is caused by envy. I spent Sunday morning watching Birmingham and Cardiff thrash it out on a pitch that resembled a paddy field. The half-time entertainment was an event dubbed On My Shed Son!, in which Blues fans kick a ball at a roofless garden shed. (One point for hitting the shed, three points for chipping the ball into the shed.)
Two days later, I was watching Liverpool-Barcelona play some of the most stunning, exciting, flowing, mesmerising football I've ever seen, on a pitch that resembled a billiard table. OK, so Ronaldinho and Gerrard weren't man enough to try to chip a ball into a garden shed, but it was still a fairly obvious step up from what I was used to.

An element of the animosity, however, is caused by the smugness of Liverpool fans. Aided and abetted by a fawning media, they seem to think they are the only fans to sing songs and cheer their team. They also boast a lot. (Yes, I'm thinking of that annoying "We won it five times" song about their European Cup victories. So what? We won the Leyland Daf Cup once, and you don't hear us singing about it.)

Bearing all this in mind, I thought I might have needed a drink last night. Not so much "one of those special nights at Anfield" (Copyright all fawning commentators and sports hacks) as one of those Special Brew nights at Anfield.

To increase the temptation, I was in an executive box, where the free booze was flowing. Had I been on the sauce, I could have had my wine topped up more often than a teenage girl on a night out with Xxxxxx Xxxxxx.*

Not only that, but I had a bet on John Arne Riise to score first, at 20-1. The Norweigian ginge had a shot cleared off the line and struck the woodwork about three times. Talk about a tease. Every time he hit the bar, I wanted to.

Despite all this temptation, I manfully resisted all alcohol. A boast that could not be made, I suspect, by Neil 'Razor' Ruddock, who was in a nearby box and looked like he had entered a Johnny Vegas lookylikey contest.

To be fair, staying off the booze was fairly easy, particularly as the spectacle was so entertaining and the atmosphere was indeed electric. (I doff my caps to the Liverpool fans for living up to their own hype.)

For me, the real football-related sobriety test will come nearer the end of the season, when my own team face possible promotion joy (champagne all round!) or another season in the Championship (a bottle of gin and a revolver please, barkeep).

A final observation about not drinking last night is that it was great to be able to drive. Not only did my four-year-old Ford Focus put the Porsches and BMWs in the Anfield carpark to shame, but it was fun to cruise past the scores of people searching in vain for a taxi outside the ground, and hundreds more who gave up and were heading back to town on foot. I thought it was just a song but it turns out they really will never walk alone.

* Please insert name here of latest Premiership footballer to be accused of rape/roast/rogering a girl he picked up in a nitespot.

Sunday March 4 - wedding Bells (or Teachers, Glenmorangie, Claymore...)

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been two months, three days and 20 hours since my last drink.

Another weekend, another chance to flagellate myself with the birch of sobriety at yet another great British booze-sodden tradition.

This week's hurdle: the wedding. A special day on which a man and a woman give a very public declaration of their love for each other. And all of their friends give a very public declaration of their love for free alcohol, pork pies and Dexys Midnight Runners. (Note: this is true for Brummie weddings but may be hopelessly off mark for other areas, so please insert your own regional variation. In Sheffield, for example, they may go wild for twiglets and Def Leppard, or in Watford for spicy knick-knacks and Elton John.)

Yesterday's wedding took place near Oxford (where natives apparently favour a prawn ring and Radiohead). It involved my old school mate, Matt Cumberlidge, and his beautiful bride, Cathy Succamore. I don't normally include surnames in this blog, but the potential for double-barrelled mirth was too hard to resist. Frankly, I was surprised and slightly disappointed that nobody went for the Cathy Succamore-Cumberlidge gag during the speeches. Just because something is on a plate, that doesn't mean it's not worth a nibble.

For the record, the speeches were all excellent but the biggest laugh came unintentionally, when the groom said: "Cathy is lucky to still have her grandparents around. I had fantastic grandparents, but they can't be here today because they have died. Oh well..."
(The 'oh well' was delivered like he had just been told he'd have to wait two minutes for his pint while the barrel was being changed.)

I knew that a wedding would represent a major challenge to my sobriety. It is, after all, a major set-piece in any drinking calendar. A 12-hour piss-up with some speeches and a white dress (and some stuff at the start about love and commitment, yadda, yadda, yadda.)

On the other hand, I believe that weddings played a large part in starting this tee-totalitarianism project in the first place. Gemma and I went to eight weddings last year. (Yes, I'm at the right age to appreciate the joke behind Four Weddings And A Funeral - unfortunately, it turns out that it's still shit.)
While I genuinely enjoyed all of those occasions, after each one I felt a familiar sense of anti-climax. After weeks of looking forward to seeing my friends and family, I'd realise that I knew absolutely nothing new about them, nor they about me. All that planned catching up and re-bonding was washed away by waves of champagne. Incinerated by flaming sambucas. Pounded to dust by the drunken foot-stomping that my people are genetically-programmed to do when we hear Come On Eileen.

All those intimate conversations and searching questions replaced by "Who's round is it?" and "Is it too early for shorts?", screamed over the wail of the doo-rah doo-rah doo-rah doo-rah-ays. (God, Dexys are a bit of a racket, when you think about it. Sorry, sorry, sorry, I didn't mean it, I take it back, I love you Dexys.)

So, in a perverse way, I was quite looking forward to my first dry wedding. At last, I thought, the chance to savour the moment. To drink it in, not drink it dry. To lap it up, not puke it up. To cherish, not chunder.

Just one problem. There's not much point in savouring the moment when everyone else is absolutely bladdered.

Not unless you want your memory to be cluttered with random soundbites like this one, which I overheard.

"Look at the lunar eclipse."
"That's not an eclipse. That's f***ing cloud."
"Oh, bollocks, I've just spent half an hour watching that."

Or this gem from Gemma, who was infuriated that I was carrying our joint cash in my wallet.
"Give me some money, Will, I'm going to the bar."
"OK, here's £20."
"Don't act like your giving me my pin money. Raj! Raj! He pretends this is his money, but it's our joint money. He's always being a patriarch, he likes to controooool me (continues in this vein for several minutes, while Raj looks tired and confused)"

Or this one, between me and a tearful lady (not Gemma).
"Everyone hates me!"
"No they don't!"
"Yes they do! That girl hates me!"
"No she doesn't!"
"OK. That girl hates me!"
"Don't be daft. She likes you."
"Well, that girl over there definitely hates me."
"Well, erm...gosh, look up there. Isn't that a lunar eclipse?"

To be fair - and at the risk of this sounding like the end of an episode of The Wonder Years, in which I learn a valuable lesson - I realised last night that I was the one with the problem. Weddings are not really designed for catching up. You do that the following day, over a greasy full English, while your hangover has caused verbal diarrhea and slight hysteria.

Nope, weddings are for full-blooded, unapologetic binges (and all that guff about love, dead grandparents etc.)

Bearing this in mind I drank two coffees, which I handily "came up on" just as the band began to play Guns'n'Roses. Tie off, air guitar on, and all thoughts of namby-pamby "conversation" out the window. I had a bloody great time. They even played The Pogues, which are a poor man's Dexys, but enable a certain amount of foot-stomping nonetheless.

It seems strange - and slightly unfair - to have gone through a wedding entirely sober but still wake up with that old nagging doubt: "Was that videocamera actually on me while I was Riverdancing last night?"

Congrats to Matt and Cathy, and thanks for a brilliant do.

Also many congrats to Don and Kate, who informally announced that they are expecting a baby in October, which will definitely be named Malcolm. (OK, so you do learn some new things at weddings, but Kate wasn't drinking so it doesn't count...)

Friday March 2 - Mass debate makes me want a stiff one

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been two months, one day and 18 hours since my last drink.

What do you think is the fastest way to drive a dry man to drink? Go on, have a guess.

Stress? Redundancy? Bereavement? Being jailed for a crime you did not commit and then discovering your cell mate is a large lifer called Ron who wants to play mummies and daddies?

None of the above. (You wouldn't able to get a drink in prison anyway. Smack? Yes. Booze? No.)

In fact, scientists have proven that the one single thing most likely to knock a man off the wagon is listening to four of his mates - all of them at the classic "five pints pissed" stage of garrulousness - debate whether Denzel Washington was correctly identified as the lead actor in the 2001 crooked cop film Training Day, or whether that honour should have gone to Ethan Hawke.

There's 28 minutes of my life I'll never see again.

Gary, Jimmy, Graham and Cardy were the guilty men, during an otherwise enjoyable night at the Penny Lane Wine Bar last night. To be fair, Cardy didn't say much, but in the few contributions he made, he insisted on referring to Washington as simply "Den-zell", like he was his best mate. Which is just as bad.

Fortunately, the conversation was so stupefying that I lost feeling in my lower legs and was unable to walk to the bar to ask the barman to put me out of my misery.

I have mixed feelings about passing the two-month mark of sobriety. One the one hand, it feels good to reach another calendar milestone. On the other, it serves as a reminder of just how long I'm going to have to keep this up. Two measly months! I'll have to do another two lots of that before I'm even half way. Bah.

To make matters worse, one of the months completed is February - the most puny and pointless month of them all. It wasn't even a leap year, dammit.

Still, like a proper alkie, all I can do is take one day at a time. Tomorrow, as they say, is another day.

So, guess what I'm doing tomorrow? Going to a wedding. And weddings, as any scientist will tell you, are the second fastest way to drive a man to drink.