Tuesday August 28 - Throw me in the Tower

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been seven months, 27 days and 10 hours since my last drink.

So, as hinted at in my last blog entry, I'm moving jobs again. After (almost) three hugely enjoyable months at the Daily Post Wales, I've been made an offer I can't refuse. From the end of September, I'm going to be a producer on a brand new talk radio station in Liverpool, with my own show at weekends.

I'm disappointed to be leaving DPW so soon (I was in my last job for six years, just in case this blog gives the impression that I'm a career slag) but I just find this opportunity too exciting to turn down. Exciting - and a bit scary, too.

I don't want to bang on about my career too much, as this blog is supposed to be about the trials and tribulations of a tee-totaller, not the stuttering career of a jobbing hack.

However, I do wonder if my sobrety is responsible in part for the upheavals in my career this year.

Yes, the DPW came looking for me, so my sobriety can hardly take the credit for that. And the seeds of the radio job were sown last year, when I was still a boozer.

However, I believe it may well have come to nothing, were it not for my booze-free project. Going on the radio to promote my blog reminded me how much I enjoy the medium, and made me want to pursue it as a career. Not drinking every weekend perhaps gave me the extra focus - and energy - I needed to get off my arse and pester the bosses at Radio City. My tee-totalism also gave the foundations for a half-decent show when I stood in for Pete Price back in May, which was probably what persuaded them to offer me this job.

But herein lies the conundrum: it seems that giving up booze may well improve your career, but it also means you can't crack open the champagne when you land that dream job, or even get horribly pissed at your leaving do.

I actually celebrated landing the radio job with the next best thing to champagne - curry. OK, so you don't get to feel like P Diddy - swaggering around a curry house with a Lamb Jalfreizi and naan in hand is not quite the same as strutting through (insert name of fashionable nitespot here) with a magnum of Crystal - but at least the good stuff makes you sweat and babble.

As for the leaving do, I'm happy to keep it low key, anyway. It's pretty embarrassing to be leaving after so short a time, so I'm certainly not after a big fuss. I suppose it'll just be another dry night out in which I get to watch Gregg get hammered and then drive him home. I think he's gonna miss me the most.

Rollercoaster career aside, it's been only a moderately challenging week on the not-drinking front. The weekdays were busy, as usual, and it's fairly easy to avoid booze when you get home late, tired and hungry.

The weekend could have been a little more complicated, as we decided to have a barbecue in our back yard on Bank Holiday Saturday. We'd been promised scorching weather and a free concert by various Beatles tribute bands on the field behind our house, so it seemed an ideal time for a party. Which, in turn, would have been a tempting time for me, as our BBQs are usually extremely drunken affairs involving enormous jugs of booze you wouldn't touch with a bargepole at any other time of year. (I have particularly fond - if slightly hazy - memories of last year's Sangria-fest and the great Pimms tsunami of 2005.)

Fortunately (in a way), the sun hid behind a stubborn layer of grey cloud all day, and the "free" concert turned out to be a ticket-only event for mug tourists who had paid £15 each to stand on what is normally a communal lavatory for our neighbourhood cats and dogs. They let us on eventually, but only on the fourth time of asking, and they must have turned a good couple of hundred away. The bands were quite good but with only a few dozen tourists and residents hanging around, Knebworth it was not.

The fact that the streets were crawling with coppers - due to two bouncers being shot on the door of Alma de Santiago the previous night - did not exactly foster a relaxed atmosphere, either.

So, what could have been a highly tempting day for a tee-totaller was really no challenge at all.

In fact, I have to say that the pisspoor summer has made this challenge a lot easier for me. Previous summers for me have been all about sitting in beer gardens (well, the Dovedale Towers car park) on baking hot evenings, or taking a coolbox of beer to Crosby beach on a Saturday, or getting slowly wasted while watching a Sunday bowls match behind the Coffee House. The only weather-related reason to drink this summer would have been a nip of whisky to keep the chill out.

For the record, I should record one other recent event which could have driven me to drink. I was playing golf yesterday and needed to birdie the last hole (a par 4) to achieve a personal best. Highly unlikely, I thought. A long but wayward drive left me with a half-decent approach. A sweet five-iron left me about five yards from the green but 30 yards from the pin. No chance of a birdie now, I thought, then watched in wonder as my perfectly-weighted chip plonked onto the green and followed a joyous arc right into the cup. Birdie and PB achieved in the most glorious shot I'd ever played. I threw my club into the air in celebration and just seconds later - I swear this is true - the Red Arrows flew overhead in the classic V (for victory!) formation. How they knew about my birdie I'll never know, but it was sweet of them to scramble so quickly to honour me like that.

Some moments are so sweet that they simply deserve booze - and that was one of them. Fortunately, there was none to hand, and the only intoxicant available was the massive spliff being shared by the gang of 12 identikit scallies behind us. Not my scene, daddio.