giveth or taketh another year

Last week was my birthday. Although technically, there are things wrong with that statement, I feel justified in its application as I started drinking on Tuesday and finally stopped at some point on Sunday morning. By that point, I was no longer drinking because it was enjoyable; I was drinking to maintain momentum.

I consider myself to be quintessentially English. One facet of this is my long love affair with alcohol, a mistress that both giveth and taketh. She can play the perfect hostess to an evening, adding sparkle, gaiety and mischief, teasing shyer revellers out of their introspection, and bathing the collective in a warm glow of belonging. Other times she beats me up so that I wake in the morning with a black eye, and have to pretend to my parents that I walked into a door. Perhaps I did walk into a door, who knows. Not me.