Don't Get Me Started..

A Fond Farewell to Wine

mail@andaluciasteve.com (Admin) — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 03:40:00 GMT

Normally when I write a blog post it's because I'm triggered about a topic. Something either angers me, amuses me or otherwise appeals to my sense of being a messenger to convey an important idea, as though I'm a frustrated cub reporter for a local newspaper. The opposite is true today. I'm writing about a simple milestone - I've just completed one year without drinking alcohol. Although I've had it in mind to blog about this for several months as the anniversary approached, I feel emotionally indifferent to it and I have no overriding message to get across. Still, here I am, bashing out the first paragraph at the keyboard but maybe if I'm lucky, the catharsis of writing about it may unlock a message for the big wrap-up at the end. Fingers crossed!

My doctor had been badgering me to quit or at least cut down my drinking for as long as I can remember. I dismissed the advice, thinking back to Harold Shand's quote from the movie 'The Long Good Friday' - "When my mum used to have a go at my old man about his boozing, he always used to say ‘If you drink less than your doctor, you're all right.’" Not that I did drink less than my doctor (though I'd heard stories) but this is more illustrative of the flawed rationalization, the classic pub logic that characterised my relationship with booze until recently.

Some weeks later, the results came back. They weren't as bad as I'd feared - no cirrhosis, no permanent liver damage. Yet. That would be the likely outcome if I continued drinking, the doctor explained. But I'd already made my decision. The problem was how to stick to it.

I'd never been without a drink for longer than three months before. I'd often made New Year’s resolutions, or embarked on foolhardy fitness drives in the past, only to find that maintaining these fads is almost impossible. They're impossible because they are necessarily 'displacements' from our normal activity. Just as a stretched spring snaps back when released, habits revert to their default state once the effort to change them fades. The trick seems to be to move the 'balanced' position in one's life but this is easier said than done. If we use the example of a see-saw, if you want to move an item on one side, the item or items on the other side have to move to accommodate the change. In our lives, the items that make up the balance on the other side of the see-saw can be anything - food, money, health, relationships, work, sleep. Any activity in one's life may need some adjustment. I should point out: I’m no life‐coach, just speaking from my own experience. This is how I feel after one year ‘on the wagon.’

Following the advice of one of the many sober influencers on social media, I decided to try to analyse my relationship with booze over the years, its origins and evolution. I certainly had to go back a long way. My parents used to enjoy a bottle of sherry at the weekend and indulged my curiosity about this as a toddler by pouring a glass for me too. The idea common at the time was that this was how the French took the mystery out of alcohol and had fewer problem drinkers in later life. I took to it like a duck to water and couldn't wait for the weekends to come around. In the celebration of things continental (these were still the days of Jeux Sans Frontières after all), as soon as I started work, having wine with dinner became the thing to do, and I explored with gusto the delights of Blue Nun and Liebfraumilch available from the Spar supermarket at the top of the road. Without a doubt though, starting work in the Civil Service really turned a mild interest in alcohol to a ritualistic compulsion.

Back in the ‘80s, when beer was less than two pounds a pint, the pub lunch was almost obligatory. We even nicknamed nearby pubs as "HQ" or the "social club". One afternoon truly felt like an episode of Life on Mars with Gene Hunt. I was having a pub lunch with the team from marketing. They were often out on the road, so having them all back at base was an occasion to celebrate, not that much of an excuse was ever needed! One guy stood up to get a round in and asked everybody what their poison was. The new girl, whose name escapes me, asked for a mineral water. There was an eerie moment of silence as the more weathered members of the group knew this was a less than ideal request. "Fuck off," he said. "I don't buy water. Get a proper drink or have nothing". She acquiesced and changed her order to a G&T. We all breathed again! This was what it was like back then.

Years later, when I ended up in Spain, the cards landed in a weird way and I found myself working on building sites to pay my mortgage. A similar orthodoxy prevailed. We’d meet up in the bar at eight in the morning for a coffee and a shot of whisky, do a day’s work, then head to the pub to drink (without eating) from six until about nine, then do it all again the next day. I gather this used to be the same back in the UK, although one of the guys I knew from those days recently reported back from building sites in blighty lamenting how empty the pubs were on a Friday afternoon, putting it down to the cost. Clearly for all its faults, Neoliberalism is having a positive effect on the health of builders’ livers.

Anyway, leaving the sojourn down memory lane, here I am today handling sobriety as best I can. I don't go to meetings or anything like that. The doctor offered to fix me up, but I figured it would be group therapy in Spanish, so of limited usefulness. I tried anti-depressants for a while, but these made things worse rather than better, so after a month or so I knocked them on the head. I console myself with the notion that I'm not an alcoholic. I can't be. It's not an available condition anymore. Today the medical establishment uses the term ‘Alcohol Use Disorder’, which is supposed to be a person-first, less stigmatising term, though I'm not sure I like the idea of being known as ‘disordered Steve!’ One small thing I do take comfort from is the reaction I get when people learn I haven't had a drink for a year. "Well done," they say, "I couldn't do that" Even people who are on the face of it quite moderate drinkers attribute reverence to the act of not drinking as though the very thought of not being able to have a drink - the concept of prohibition - is completely alien to them. I think something we all share at a deep level is the sense of being naughty and a bit rebellious when indulging in a vice of any kind. If I want to stick two fingers up at society and live life on the edge now I have an ice-cream, where the threat of type-2 diabetes is real!

So at the end of the day, what are the benefits of not drinking? Am I a nicer person? No, I don't think so. If anything I'm even more the judgemental curmudgeon I was before. That became apparent this week when I went to pick up my 'free' recycling bags and had to queue for 15 minutes at the designated town hall office. It seems to have grown to employ four people and is protected by a security guard, such is the unpopularity of the wretched scheme. Despite asking very nicely, the ‘jobsworth’ refused to give me two rolls of biodegradable bin-liners for my refuse (we were allocated two rolls when the infernal scheme started, now we're limited to one). On the way home, I couldn't help grumbling to myself. A roll of bags lasts three months if I'm lucky, so I would have to make this round-trip four times a year to satisfy the town hall recycling zealots. That’s two hours of my limited time on this planet sacrificed on the altar of corporate greenwashing - companies that exploit our planet’s resources without any financial accountability. Oops - see there I go again.

I have however dispelled the myth that it's the late night drinking that induces us to make dubious online purchases. Trust me - stuff still turns up from Amazon and AliExpress that I have only the vaguest recollection of ordering.

The only major benefit that quitting the booze has really made to my life is attention. Being more present means I spend a tad more time on things I would previously have deemed too boring and trivial. As a result I'm making better use of space in my house and time in my day. I had a six-month fight with sleep due to my dopamine system being wrecked to get to this place, but I'm glad I'm here. This couldn't have come at a better time as, and this will sound just a little bit weird, AI has come along on this journey with me, solving problems where previously there would have been roadblocks to progress. I can't help thinking if I'd tried to quit drinking five years ago, before Claude, Grok and ChatGPT were standing by my side as I go into battle against the demon drink, I just might not have made it!

Admin ...

Crappy Christmas

mail@andaluciasteve.com (Admin) — Sat, 19 Dec 2020 23:36:00 GMT

Well thanks to Covid it looks like a crappy Christmas for all with most countries having some sort of restrictions against seasonal revelling. No office Christmas parties, no wassailing and no door to door carolling (every cloud on that last one I suppose)!

I do miss office Christmas parties. One that sticks in the mind was back in the late 80's when a few dozen of us civil servants booked a Christmas dinner in the Novotel in Hammersmith, West London. Being the Civil Service, we'd already had a few drinks on the way there and were in true party mode by the time we pitched up and took our places at the table. It all looked festive enough and we were looking forward to getting stuffed with Turkey and trimmings.

Then something weird and unsettling happened. The first course came out, and, horror of horrors, it was Nouvelle cuisine. We looked down on basically empty plates, save for a few leaves and a squirt of sauce. Suddenly the air turned sacred blue as a bunch of hard-done-by office workers feared their main course would be a sparrow with a grape in its mouth. Words were had with the management, all the starters were returned and the hotel, sensing the bad publicity that a violent riot of incensed pen-pushers would bring, relented and cooked for us instead a traditional Christmas dinner (with all the trimmings).

If like me you're not a particularly religious person, maybe a bit spiritual, perhaps in awe of the real wonders of the universe like singularities but you're just not comfortable with the idea of an old man with a beard watching you while you're taking a shower, you may feel a bit of a fraud celebrating Crimbo. I've found a comfortable alternative that justifies partaking in as much Christmas cheer as you like. Also, you can observe all the good socialist teachings of Jesus and the new testament without having to buy into anything supernatural, divine or weird. It's called Christian atheism. Basically you just follow the moral and ethical teachings without acknowledging the existence of an overarching, omniscient, supernatural creator. It's really good as you can stuff yourself with as much Christmas pud and mince pies as you like without a pang of guilt (well until you get on the scales in January)

This also means you can enjoy Christmas carols and services without feeling like too much of an outsider. I came across a cracking version of Silent Night recently made by the American soul singer Michael Macdonald. If you know of a better version of a traditional carol, let me know!

Merry Christmas everybody!

Admin ...

A brief sketch of my dad

mail@andaluciasteve.com (Admin) — Sun, 23 Aug 2020 07:03:00 GMT

My late father would have been celebrating his 112 birthday today were he alive, which is a good excuse for me to relate a few stories about him.

When I was a youngster there were no end of people who would take me aside and tell me what a good man my father was. His work colleagues, neighbours, seemingly anyone who knew him, deemed it necessary to point out to me I had a good dad. We moved house when he retired and within months our new neighbours were taking me aside telling me what a good chap he was. I must say I took it for granted. I thought every kid's father must have a similar fan-club!

Then, when I was 17 he died suddenly. It fell to me to sort out his affairs as mother, lovely though she was, could hardly write a cheque. As I went though his papers I came across a big wodge of letters going back thirty years or so. Each was a 'thank you' letter. Most started 'Dear brother Gould, thank you for help with xxx'. It turned out he had been the 'shop steward' for his trade union. Dad was a school caretaker and looked after the interests not only for the people working in his school but many all over the Kingston area. Only then did it dawn on me why so many folk had been keen to point out why father was such a good fellow. He'd spent all his working life defending the interests of common people. I didn't even know. He never talked about it. He was a working class hero, and as John Lennon aptly said, that was something to be.

Dad came from inauspicious beginnings. Born one of eight siblings in 1908, his father, who was an itinerant agricultural labour, failed to return one winter. His mother supported the family by taking in washing, but the strain became too great, so dad and his little brother George were sent away to the Farm School in Bisley, a charitable institution run on military lines. Father learned lots of interesting skills there, including, shooting, bee-keeping, cobbling, the rudiments of music and, in the absence of much food other than gruel, the ability to forage in the country. He told me pigeons, rabbits and hedgehogs were common treats that he and his friends would kill and eat after school.

He did well in his exams and returned to Surbiton, where after a few casual jobs including a stint as a telegram delivery boy, he secured a job with the Water Board in Kingston. As part of his apprenticeship he had to attend college in north London, a journey he did everyday by bicycle, which would have been a 25 mile round -trip - not bad for the boneshakers of the day. The timeline becomes a little foggy at this point but somewhere along the line in the 1920's to 1930's he became an assistant to a plumber, travelling the country installing coal-fire central heating systems, which were cutting edge at the time, so most of the installations were in grand mansion houses and castles. Clients included George Westinghouse of the Westinghouse Brake company and Lord Nuffield, he of the Morris Motor company. Dad said Nuffield was an insomniac whose mind was always racing far too much for sleep. His fascination for engineering was such that Nuffield spent much time with them, wishing to learn everything possible about the boilers, pipes and radiators they were installing.

I believe dad went independent as a plumber and had his own business in the mid to late 1930s as I used to have business cards and brochures with his name on. I wish I still had them as the Art-Deco influenced artwork of the bathroom suites were a sight to behold. I think the war put an end to that as he enlisted into the Royal Air Force in 1939 and trained as an engineer, spending much time patching up warplanes returning from combat. He was invalided out in 1942 and joined the Home Guard, where ironically he patrolled the water-board in Kingston with a pick-axe handle, the place where he had started his career in engineering. Incidentally, he wasn't a fan of TV or fiction but he loved the show Dad's Army as it mirrored his own time defending London against the invading Hun.

After the war, prompted by his first wife, he took a job as a caretaker of Hollyfield School. His wife was lured by the cottage adjacent to the school, though sadly she died not long after they moved in. A decade later he married my mother and remained in the janitorial position until his retirement in 1973.

So many things come to mind when I think of my father. His capacity to learn things amazed me. He could communicate in sign language. Most people only learn this to communicate with an afflicted relative. Dad learned it while recuperating in hospital during the war. The matrons were very strict about noise on the ward, so he and a fellow patient taught themselves to sign each other so as to communicate silently. He learned music at school but only clarinet and cornet. Yet he could also play piano quite well. I don't know how he learned this, as he never owned a piano. He just seemed to 'pick it up' whenever he had access to one. I'd also seen him play other instruments like the mouth-organ and the accordion. He was one of those people who seemed to be able to coax a tune out of any instrument he picked up.

On one occasion he found a large wasp nest, the size of a cello in one of the school's outbuildings. It was full of wasps and hummed in a scary manner as though the whole thing was alive. Instead of calling in pest controllers, and without much in the way of protective equipment he removed it himself by, as I recall, making a smoke gun from an old paint can and some oily rags. He repaired watches for a hobby. He was always learning new things and instilled in me the idea of being a life-long learner, long before the phrase became commonplace.

He taught me so many crazy but practical things, like to store paint cans upside down once opened so as any skin forms on the bottom. When climbing a ladder the rungs are strongest at the edges, so avoid treading in the middle of the rungs as that's where they're most likely to snap. He taught me to read before I went to school and as a toddler, bounced me on his knee while reciting chemical formulae. He taught me how to avoid 'catch-pennies' and never to trust politicians. He showed me how to change a tap washer without turning off the mains water. He showed me an exciting way to check for leaks with a cigarette lighter when installing a gas fire. He was old skool! He rode a Harley Davidson before it was cool. I once saw him use divining rods to locate a blockage in a drain. To me, everything about him was remarkable and I was convinced my dad had super-powers. I loved him dearly then as I do now. Happy birthday dad!

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