Sunday April 22 - Going the distance

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been three months, 21 days and 16 hours since my last drink.

My back has gone.

There's an old codger's saying, if ever there was one.

No 30-year-old man should ever have to announce that his back has gone, never mind a 30-year-old man who has given up booze and therefore deserves never to get ill again.

Maybe the lack of booze was the problem. Maybe a lifetime's drinking slowly replaced my spinal fluid with strong lager, and for the last three and a half months the reserves have been drying up and now my back bones are grating together.

I'm no doctor, but that sounds feasible to me. I should be surrounded by saucy nurses (is there any other kind?) feeding me Kronenburg until the fluid balance is restored. But am I receiving such basic treatment from our wonderful NHS? Fat chance. Not in Blair's Britain, matey.

Whatever the reason, it "went" on Saturday morning. I'd like to claim this medical trauma occurred as I leapt to pluck a small child from in front of a speeding car, or at least during a Rocky V-style training run, in which I helped a peasant to pick up their overturned cart.

Alas, I suspect (by which I mean I know) that it happened after I leapt off the sofa and made a playfully abusive gesture to Gem. The gesture may have involved (by which I mean did involve) bending over and making my buttocks "talk" to her. For those of you reading this with your Monday morning coffee and muffin, please rest assured that I was clothed.

The misery caused by my injury was only compounded when I watched the London Marathon footage on TV today. It has been comforting to know that for the past few months a fair few people were on self-imposed booze bans as they prepared for the big run. Even though I did not know any personally, these imaginary tee-total comrades gave me strength. However, they are all gone now, and will surely be spending all that sponsorship money on champagne before you can say "Cancer Research? Never heard of 'em".

So it's just me left. Me, the God-botherers, the pregnants, and the terminally unsociable. I don't even get to dress up as a pantomime horse, or be interviewed by Colin Jackson. So this is how it feels to be lonely.

Speaking of pregnants (although not necessarily tee-total pregnants), my sister Charlotte came to visit last night with husband Jim and their two-year-old son, Bay.

It was lovely to see them - and not least because their visit gave me the perfect excuse not to go to a German beer festival in Wavertree, to which Jimmy and Gary were trying to tempt me.

However, the sight of a young family yet again served as a brutal reminder that, if Gem and I decide to have kids, I may well be wasting one of my last years of freedom in pointless tee-totalism. Char and Jim's sizeable family car was absolutely packed with bags. They were mainly pastel-coloured and not one of them contained alcohol.

The future's dry. The future's orange (squash).

So why am I burdening myself and destroying my social life before I have to? Probably the same reason marathon runners do: Stubborn pride, a sense of challenge, and the chance to feel the unmistakable glow of inner-smugness.

And if someone gives me a foil blanket at 0001 on January 1st 2008, it will all have been worthwhile.