Tuesday December 25th - I'm dreaming of a dry Christmas

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been 11 months, 24 days and 17 hours since my last drink.

SIX DAYS AND SEVEN HOURS LEFT! (THAT'S LESS THAN A WEEK!)

Christmas without booze is a strange thing. It's now 5pm on the big day and, although I've had a perfectly nice time, I still feel like I'm waiting for Chritsmas to actually happen. That's probably because, in my social alkie's mind, Christmas ain't Christmas until you've got that slightly giddy pleasure of being half cut before noon.

Last year I was getting stuck into the Kir Royales (well it is a gay time of year) with breakfast, and onto the strong German beer by the time the Queen (ironically another strong German) was delivering her speech. This year I'm not even allowed to have brandy butter with my Christmas pudding. Which is a shame, because brandy butter is the only thing that makes Christmas pudding even vaguely palatable.

On the plus side, by 5pm on a normal Christmas the fun effects of the alcohol would be wearing off, only to be replaced by a feeling of flush-faced tetchiness. My paper crown would by now be translucent and stuck to my forehead by a sheen of turkey and Sambuca-flavoured sweat. I would be competing for pole position in some kind of unofficial farting contest and the bags under my eyes would begin to resemble the dark meat from a turkey's more unmentionable regions.

Instead, I feel fighting fit and fresh as a daisy. I've had a light lunch, a few apple juices and a bracing walk along the canal. I'm looking forward to a proper Christmas dinner, a couple of films and I'm pretty sure to have a good night's sleep.

Does it feel good? Yes.

Does it feel Christmassey? Nah.

Oh well, the good news is that among a haul of brilliant pressies my folks have given me six bottles of nice-looking wine "to get me started again". I'm genuinely excited at the tought of necking them. And Hannah (my sister) has given me a bottle of what claims to be "the world's strongest lager". It's 14%, which is rather intimidating, but I'm sure I'll find it a good home at around five past midnight on New Year's Day.

Happy Christmas.

PS. Christmas Eve used to be one of the highlights of my drinking calendar - from the mammoth home brew parties I hosted from around the age of 15, to classic school reunion nights in the dodgy hostelries of Solihull and Digbeth, to staggering along Allerton Road when I was supposed to be on call. Last night, however, I went to the Richmond Tavern, had two Britvic 55s (one apple, one orange) and a sparkling mineral water. It's lucky I'm on sobriety autopilot these days, because that kind of behaviour is just wrong, wrong, wrong.