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.