Saturday July 21 - Fray-ed Nerves

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been six months, 20 days and 22 hours since my last drink.

Another weekend, another Gregg Fray-related incident. (We're not lovers, although you'd be forgiven for assuming we were 'life partners' from the regularity of his appearance in this blog.)

Sometimes I wish I had a video camera to record just how annoying Gregg can be when he is drunk. Then I remember, I do have a video camera. In fact, I have two video cameras. It's just that I can never be arsed to take them out with me to record Gregg being annoying.

It's probably for the best. For one thing, he'd be even more annoying if there was a camera pointing at him. For another, it would have been dangerous for me to record him being annoying tonight, as his annoying behaviour took the form of hanging more than half of his body from the passenger window of my car, screaming Oasis songs at the top of his lungs, while I drove at around 80mph on the M56.

It also involved pulling on the handbrake in order to force me to stop for fags, twisting my rear view mirror around in order to watch himself sing 'power ballads', draping himself over me to sing romantically to me/breathe beery fumes in my face, and generally making a nuisance of himself throughout a one-hour journey from Malpas in Cheshire back to the Pool. All of this in fairly torrential rain. So, on balance, I don't think that looking through a camcorder viewfinder instead of the windscreen would have been the best idea.

The occasion for today's merriment was the 40th birthday party of Rob Davies, who works with me on the DP newsdesk. One of Rob's friends works for Marstons brewery, and kindly bought along a 72-pint keg of Banks' Bitter. Rob had a pint of it. His mate had a pint or two. Even one of the ladies had a half. Gregg pretty much made it his business to see to the rest of it. Maria, who used to work at the DP, matched him drink for drink. On the white wine. And lucky old me got to drive them both home.

And if there's one thing more annoying than a drunken Gregg, it's a drunken Gregg with a female audience.

To be honest, I had a great afternoon, and was not massively bothered by not having a bevvy. I didn't even mind Gregg being a twat on the way home, which seemed to disappoint him a little as he was clearly hoping for a reaction.

"I'll tell you what old buddy," he slurred as I finally dropped him off at home, "you've got the patience of a saint."

Maybe I do, maybe I don't. But I vowed at the start of this project that I would be the same old Will even when stone-cold sober. I know the old me wouldn't have stopped him being an arse, so why should the sober me? (Having said that, even the old me would have stopped him pissing in that front garden in Malpas while a young girl looked on in horror. The sober me, however, was simply too embarrassed to admit to knowing him.)

On Friday night, I went to Penny Lane Wine Bar with Gregg (again, we're not lovers), Gary and Graham. It was OK, but most of the night was spent outside in the freezing rain, due to the smoking ban. I drank pints of orange juice and soda, but have now grown as sick of that acidic concoction as I did of blackcurrant cordial and soda.

I'm beginning to realise the brutal truth of the matter. There is no soft drink that is pleasant to drink in large quantities (more than two pints) because that is about as much drink as the human body needs in any one sitting. The only reason it feels pleasant to drink pint after pint of ale is that your body is too pissed to notice it doesn't need any more.

Sigh. Roll on January, cos this is getting boring now. I want to be the smelly annoying drunk leaning out of the car window singing Oasis, not the boring old OJ-sipping saint in the driving seat.