No booze for more than 24 hours now, go me. Happy new year from the blog.
OK it's only half ten in the morning, but still, no booze all year so far. I can feel it doing me the power of good.
New Year's Eve was nice, round some friends' house for champagne cocktails and baby talk and then off to Chambers to meet Emma and her brother and his girlfriend. Good times, good beers, bumped into some friends from work too. This never happens, I still feel that I don't really know anybody locally even after five years (or is it six now?). Work friends said they had planned to go to Bar Vasa but then changed their mind when [fg=Bar Vasa]Vasa[/fg] changed their plans from ticket only to just free entry. Friends were suspicious this meant it was not looking like a lively busy night, and once you are at [fg=Bar Vasa]Vasa[/fg] you are stuck there really, so they switched to Chambers. Chambers also changed their plans from tickets to a contribution to charity on the door. It wasn't the busiest New Years Eve ever, but it was nice that people had the freedom to move from bar to bar if they wanted. We saw new year in (I'm sure they called it a couple of minutes early), then came home and sat up too late watching TV and drinking.
I was planning not to drink for the first few weeks of the year (maybe the whole month, though maybe not) so leaving unfinished bottles of wine around would be the first test. Actually having unopened bottles around will be tempting enough. Clare is going to join me in this, but her new year is not really starting until today, or maybe tomorrow. Yesterday we went to Dom and Jen's for lunch, no-one there is in on my foolish plan and they opened a couple of nice bottles with lunch, gah. Not that it is my plan, I'm sure I know lots of people who stop drinking in January, maybe it's more of a London thing.
So, day two, as I said, and it's not even crossing my mind yet, this will be easy. There's about a glass of Casillero del Diablo that Clare saved for cooking so will maybe make a sausage casserole or pasta sauce or something later. Clare asked for Gill Holcombe's book1 for Christmas, so might try the pasta sauce recipe in there.
So has my new year alcohol obsession really pushed the boy five paragraphs down into this post? Looks like it. He's still not well, proper chesty and today and yesterday the snottiness of the cold has made him throw up, but I hope this means it's on its way out now. He's still happy enough. Clare is out viewing her parents new house now, The boy's here with me but having his nap. I think that might be Clare and her folks just returning, but I am scared to look out of the window and see. I had a strange dream last night that I got into a feud with a local gang of kids after I told them not to climb a tree outside the flat and then one of them fell out of the tree and the gang turned on me like a pack of hungry zombies. Maybe the lack of booze is going to give me strange dreams. I will report back.
Happy new year everyone.
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in A small town. Married to Clare + father to two, I am a full-stack web engineer, and I do js / nodejs, some ruby, python, php ect ect. I like pubs, parkrun, eating, home automation and other diy jiggery-pokery, history, genealogy, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.