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  • Dry January - the last weekend

    It’s nearly the end of January and not only did I fail to blog every week I had a drink at the 50th birthday meal I mentioned in my last post. I also had a drink this weekend. I am not going to look at this as a failure. I did three weeks, then five days and next week I’ll be mostly dry too. By the end of the first week in February that will be close to five weeks in total, a significant reset from where I was at the end of 2021.

  • Dry January - Week Two

    Week two complete. I’ve heard it said this week is the point at which committments made at new year often go by the wayside, initial enthusiasm tempered by the slow attrition of passing time and the general winter grimness of mid-January. I can attest to this and have found this week a bit more difficult as I suspected I might. Forewared is forarmed, though, and I’ve not seriously considered taking a drink.

  • Statues, slavers and history

    Most people can hardly have missed the Not Guilty verdict returned this week by the jury in the trial of the so-called “Colston 4”, the four people from a crowd of hundreds put on trial for pulling down the statue of Edward Colston, a slave trader misrepresented for many years as a philanthropist, and dumping it into Bristol Harbour. This was right and proper; a guilty verdict would have been a travesty.

  • Dry January - Week One

    Week one of Dry January 2022 complete. Although I’ve often thought about drinking and had the odd moment when I felt a bit of a craving, those were fleeting and it’s not been difficult so far. In fact I’ve been rather enjoying myself; it’s almost a relief to have permission not to drink, especially after a week of culturally expected over-indulgence. It’s also been helped by the fact that I’m on-call this week, which usually means no or only low-level drinking anyway, so a good week to start on.

  • Dry January

    I’m going to do Dry January this next year. Over the past months (years, now 😭) of the Covid pandemic I’ve slipped into bad habits and have, at times, been drinking more than I’m comfortable with.