Category Archives: Whatever gets you through the night

Menace to sobriety

Posted in Every day survival, Whatever gets you through the night by

Three days off the booze!

Enough to make me realise that sobriety has absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever, except to allow you to announce Three days off the booze! smugly in the faces of your hung-over friends.sobriety%20freeway%20exit

So far it’s caused insomnia (probably due to the fact that I’m so bored in the evenings I just go to bed), which in turn causes me to lie there thinking about M, which in turn makes me feel hopelessly empty and sad.

It’s caused almost complete cessation of my studies, as only a mind numbed by alcohol can begin to contemplate the bullshit contained within academic textbooks.

I don’t feel any better physically, emotionally or creatively. So what’s the point?

I went off it because of a bowel-loosening piece of propaganda I read in the doctor’s earlier this week. It stated that by regularly exceeding the advised 21 units of alcohol per week for a woman, I was almost certainly going to contract a hideous, if not terminal disease. In fact, as a long-term abuser, it was a foregone conclusion.

I totted up my weekly unit consumption according to their calculation of 10 units equalling one bottle of wine. You do the maths.

Immediately after M died, I was positively encouraged to get shit-faced – and the earlier in the day the better. Red wine for breakfast? Why not? After all, I deserved it! Now, 16 months on, it seems there’s less of an excuse.

My abstention ends tonight, however. I am visiting a friend for the weekend and we have to get drunk because it’s Father’s Day on Sunday and how can I possibly cope with that when I’m sober?

Any excuse…

Desperado

Posted in Every day survival, Uncategorized, Whatever gets you through the night by
Peaceful Easy Feeling

Peaceful Easy Feeling (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I think He’s trying to contact me via the medium of Radio Two.

It could be worse I guess – Smooth FM or the jazz channel. But the point is, I’ve listened to the radio just three times since He’s been gone, and each time it seems to talk directly to me.

I tuned into Chris Evans a few months back and what was he about to play? Heart of Gold by Neil Young. The song played at M’s funeral and one of His all time favourite tracks.

A month ago, I was driving to work and forgot to bring a CD for the car. Cue Steve Wright in the Afternoon (I know, I know, but even he’s preferable to silence, in which Bad Thoughts might pervade.)

Every single tune (there were six in a row) was significant – from Peaceful Easy Feeling by The Eagles (one of ‘our’ songs) to Hurt by Johnny Cash. I was so freaked out I ‘listened again’ when I got home to see if I knew the person who had chosen the songs – and that’s akin to torture when it’s Steve Wright.

Yesterday, I caught Jeremy Vine just in time for the debate on bodies in morgues – the process of ‘collecting them from the community’ to preparing them for the funeral home. I nearly vomited up my lunch.

M loved music, so I guess it wouldn’t be entirely out of the realms of possibility that He would try to communicate over the airwaves. I want so desperately to have a ‘sign’ from Him, I’m prepared to believe anything. Even in the psychic powers of Steve Wright.