Play it forward

I've been thinking more about my last post - 'not the girl he married'. Thank you so much for your comments - as always, a wonderful mix of empathy, humour and sound advice.

I realised, on re-reading, that the wine witch - yet again - had me romanticising the past.

I was waxing lyrical about boozy Sunday lunches with friends, elaborate gourmet dinners at home with fine wine, and date nights in fancy restaurants with aperitifs, wine and digestifs. Oh it is so, so easy to view it all through rose (I want to put an ecoute on the e of rose, but my iPhone won't let me!) coloured spectacles.

The AA advice is, I think, to 'play it forward', so in the interests of honesty, and to cast a blow against the wine witch, here's what happens when I press forward on the memory tape....

The boozy Sunday lunches with friends: I start drinking while preparing lunch (after all, I need to add wine to the gravy!). By the time the friends arrive with various children in tow I'm about 2/3 of a bottle down and finding it seriously tricky to co-ordinate all the cooking with the chatting, and hostessing.

By the end of the meal I've become horribly boring as I repeat anecdotes I've told a million times and/or forget the punchlines. I'm stuck on 'transmit' rather than receive, so don't ask my guests anything about their lives.

Usually at least one or two of our guests aren't drinking as they're driving, or on water after drinking too much on Saturday night. I must look seriously raddled to anyone completely sober!

Once everyone leaves (about 3.30pm) I clean up, while polishing off any leftover wine, then invariably fall asleep for a couple of hours. I wake up feeling really grumpy and yell at the husband and children. I realise that homework's not been finished, and the children have spent hours on electronic devices and are bouncing off the walls. Horrible evening followed by restless night. I start the week exhausted and depressed.

And those gourmet evening meals at home over a shared bottle? Here's the truth - I spend most of the meal trying to ensure that I get more than half of the wine. Husband gets cross as he had to drink at top speed if he's going to get more than a small glass. I start planning how to casually produce second bottle without getting a 'look', or a lecture.

If I do manage to open the next bottle (or if I'd quietly polished off a few glasses before husband got home) I'm drunk and cross by the end of the meal and end up picking a fight - often over horribly boring stuff like loading the dishwasher. We try to watch TV together, but I fall asleep after ten minutes. I wake up at about 3am hating myself (again).

What about 'date nights'? I usually manage not to pick a fight, and generally collapse in a cheerful(ish) heap when we get home, but I sleep really badly and wake up with the hangover from hell. I spend all morning counting the minutes until I can open the next bottle, as I know it's the only way of making the headache go away.

So, the truth is that whilst the husband probably does miss the girl he married 13 years ago (if he can remember her. Not sure that I can!), he almost certainly doesn't miss the girl he was married to 35 days ago.

Happy, sober Easter everyone!

Love SM x