Londoners Magazine

Oh dear. How ever many weeks of writing my weekly musings on the drinks industry has fallen foul with the parents. Read back to week one of my blogs when I explain my dirty habit of the devil’s drink. I think I may have blamed my parents for my unhealthy addiction. Well, six months away from country lanes, coal fires, oil seed rape and Range Rovers (edit that one) and I have forgotten that the internet is still accessible in these outback parts of the north.

It is easy to forget that your parents KNOW EVERYTHING. When you thought that you were coming through the door at 1am after a night out at the pub and had composed yourself enough to come across as though you were sober, you were wrong. They knew. They could tell as soon as you opened your mouth and the decibel level of your voice raised a couple of notches. You think you’re actually being quiet, but really it is because your ears are still ringing from the sound of ‘I am the one and only’ on the speakers. And you also thought now would be a convenient time to broach a discussion of the Palestine/Israel conflict with your parents.

The thing is I always knew that my parents could tell if I was drunk because I could hear my mum creep into my room and check my pulse to make sure that I was still breathing.

This weekend I left the busy life of London to conduct a couple of interviews and pop in and see my parents. And they had read my blog, denying that they were the cause for my love of alcohol and that they only drank at the weekend. And after golf on Wednesday. And so I apologized and explained that it was my own self-denial for being the cause of my supposed habit.

Until that night when, it being a Thursday, my dad comes through the door after work and signals to me from the fridge door a sign that means ‘what are you drinking?’ (hand cupped around an imaginary beer can and a slight head tilt to show imaginary gulping of beer). Of course I graciously accept a cold beer.

I have now been here for four days and had a drink every day. I even have a sherry with me now, at 1pm on a Sunday. Because after all, it is God’s day, you even have alcohol at church.