Don't Try This at Home

I had intended to follow up on the last post by going and finding out what Alcoholics Anonymous actually did (beyond telling people never to touch alcohol ever again - other than presumably in the format of nail polish remover, and then only for external use - and also encouraging them to spend time on a regular basis with other former alcoholics, which has always seemed a bit odd), but life rather got in the way.

In fact, life very kindly got me drunk. I very rarely get drunk these days, but several of my former bosses had kindly organised a leaving dinner for me -presumably in order to make their consciences glow more easily at having allowed someone else in the pointlessly labyrinthine management structure to fire me in the first place - and by the time it ended I was having to concentrate quite hard to work out which way was vertical, and how to stop words running into one another. It is arguable that I wasn't quite drunk enough, as when a fabulously polymath American, who is nearing retirement age, tried to teach me how to do the proper Wizard of Oz skip (on the Strand, near Charing Cross, at about 10.30 on Monday evening) I actually managed to decline. But I was still a very long way from anything even remotely resembling sober.

The following day, I didn't feel great. I actually hadn't been feeling great the day before either, but had put that down to nerves. The following day I put it down to the amount I had drunk, and forced myself to carry on and have another (non-alcoholic) blow-out meal with a friend in the evening. The day after that I felt queasy at the thought of anything other than water, and ended up spending the afternoon in bed after coming out in a weird rash on the way back from having my hair cut.

I also ate no chocolate, at all, all day.

Sadly, this was a one-off. On Thursday I began my Valentine's day preparations by eating the Bourneville which I didn't need for the millionaire's shortbread which the husband had asked for (it sounds worse once you know that the excess was 75g - a bar and a half and a bit in non-fatty terms). But I did it. I went a whole day without chocolate. I just have no idea what exact combination of circumstance I need to reproduce in order to make sure it happens again - and would rather not feel sick or come out in spots in the process.