AA Gill

AA Gill announced in his Sunday Times restaurant review this weekend that he has cancer.

Not just a little bit of cancer, like I had, but 'an embarrassment of cancer, the full English. There is barely a morsel of offal not included. (He has) a trucker's gut-buster, gimpy, malevolent, meaty malignancy.'

This made me cry. Not because I've ever met AA (Adrian Anthony, not Alcoholics Anonymous, although more on that later), but because he is a genius and the world would be a less interesting and vibrant place without his words.

I can, I hope, make words line up on a stage and take a hesitant bow, but AA can make words do aerial acrobatics and death defying somersaults. His metaphors and analogies make me laugh out loud with their originality and utter rightness.

AA is an alcoholic which is, in my book, another reason to love him. In his early thirties a GP told him that unless he quit drinking he would only live another six months.

'It's not death that terrifies me,' Gill said, 'it's life.' And isn't that just a perfect explanation of why we drink?

Gill dried out, did the steps and was introduced to an editor at Tatler who commissioned him to write an article about his experience in rehab. The rest, as they say, was history.

It's not his years of drinking that caused AA's cancer, but his other addiction - nicotine. Despite having ditched the smokes fifteen years ago he has smoking related lung cancer.

AA says of his future: 'I don't feel I've been cheated of anything....I gave up (alcohol) when I was still young, so it was like being offered the next life. It was the real Willy Wonka golden ticket, I got a really good deal.'

So, if you're still humming and hah-ing about quitting then please just grab that golden ticket while you're still young enough to make the most of it.

And Adrian, if you ever come across this post, then thank you. Thank you for showing us all how words can change the world.

SM x

P.S. If you want to read my blog from the beginning then click here.

Hurrah for Gin

Finally, after eight whole weeks of summer madness, the kids go back to school today.

I'm up stupidly early in anticipation.

The uniforms are laid out and labelled. Pencil cases are stocked with newly sharpened pencils, pristine erasers and unblemished protractors.

I've shaken the sand out of their ears, blasted stubborn verruccas (my spell check thinks this should be verrucae) off their feet and had their hair cut.

We are good to go.

When I quit work after #3 was born, nearly eight years ago, I thought I'd be the perfect Mum.

The house would be filled with fresh flowers and the aroma of cup cakes baking. It'd be craft tables, not TV, laughter filled outings to museums and perfectly delivered introductions with eye contact.

How the Gods must have chuckled.

Instead, I was sucked into an exhausting Groundhog day of wiping orifices, peeling dried spaghetti and Rice Krispies off floors and ceilings and dealing with tantrums, all set to the soundtrack of The Wiggles and punctuated with endless re-readings of the Gruffalo.

So I totally get the latest trend (spearheaded by the movie Bad Moms) for tales of 'imperfect mothers.'

According to the Sunday Times, this Christmas's bestseller is going to be one of these, titled Hurrah for Gin.

Hurrah for Gin is based on a blog written by a 26 year old Mum of two who's on maternity leave from her job in advertising.

It's exactly the book I would have written ten years ago (when I was also in advertising and on maternity leave with a toddler and a baby). And it struck me that it's like the prequel to this blog.

(Except my book would be titled Hurrah for Chablis. My only saving grace was not having developed a taste for spirits).

And the title is perfect. Because when you're in the trenches of motherhood, alcohol provides those much needed oases of calm.

For me, a glass of wine could put the zing into a late afternoon playdate with a girlfriend, and the zen into post children's bed time. At the end of a long, frazzled day I could pour a glass of wine, dance around the kitchen and think yeah, baby, she's still got it.

But the problem with relying on vino, or gin, to relax, to de-stress, to feel adult, is that one day - maybe a decade down the line - you find that you can't relax, de-stress or feel adult without it.

And that's when you stop reading Hurrah for Gin! and start reading Mummy was a Secret Drinker.

So I do rather worry about yet another book which normalises relying on an addictive drug to get through the realities of everyday life. After all, I am the cautionary tale.

Love SM.

P.S. If you'd like a male perspective on all of this, then click here to check out my new friend, Makeittea.

And thank you, Makeittea, for your incredibly generous donation to my Justgiving page for breast cancer support (www.justgiving.com/fundraising/sober-mummy).

Positive Choices

Day 92. Rhymes with Woohoo!

I was reading the Sunday Times yesterday, and found, on the first page of the Magazine, an article by one of their columnists - Katie Glass - entitled 'Here's to the most outrageous thing I've ever done: giving up drinking.'

Annoyingly, I can't post a link, because you have to be a subscriber (what happened to sharing nicely, guys?).

Katie talks about giving up alcohol for a month. She says "Things I discovered while not drinking: I am a morning person. I am not the Best Dancer Ever. Most thrilling: it turns out there's nothing I did drunk I can't do sober."

She also talks about the 'pink cloud.' She writes '...after a week or so, something new: I began to feel a deep sense of happiness, so euphoric, I didn't mention it to anyone, because it's so bloody smug....Still, there it is. A dreamy bliss, at times so overwhelming, it hits my stomach in a sheer rush of joy like going down on a swing.'

(Going down on a swing sounds a bit pornographic to me, but that's just my warped mind).

On the negative side, she says '...being so predictable reminds me why I liked drinking so much. Because you can open a bottle without knowing where it will lead - a bar, a book, an overdrawn credit card, a flight...' and reflects on a quote by Goethe: "A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days."

But, she concludes, 'eventually, even being bad gets boring. Saturday night - pub, club - becomes predictable too. And now binge-drinking is ubiquitous, staying sober feels a more outrageous thing to do.'

Thank you, Katie - who has, for the time being, decided to stay sober - for presenting sober as the individual, rebellious choice.

I posted the same thought a while ago in 'Rebel Without a Cause', and one of my much loved regular readers, Tallaxo, posted this comment recently: I never really followed the crowd and liked to be a little different, so that's the way I look at sobriety. It is kind of unique because so few people are doing it. I even have a silly grin on my face as I'm paying for my non-alcoholic pear cider at the Tesco checkout. It's a kind of 'look at me. Who's the clever one now?'

Because of years of marketing and brainwashing we are conditioned to see 'sober' as being something that some poor unfortunates are forced into doing because they are sick. It's up to people like Katie Glass, and all of us, to change that. To present it as a positive lifestyle choice.

I have - finally - started to tell people that I've stopped drinking. I don't tell them it's forever (as that makes them uncomfortable in the same way it used to make me uncomfortable), but I tell them that, having given up initially 'for Lent,' I felt so much better that I'm carrying on.

I tell them that I sleep better, I'm losing weight, my moods are better and I have more energy. Then they start to look at me with admiration rather than pity.

Most of the people I've come across since starting this blog never reached 'rock bottom.' We didn't have to stop drinking. We hadn't (yet) got to the point where our families and friends intervened. We hadn't lost our homes, our children, our health.

Most of us weren't even physically dependant and didn't need rehab. We chose to stop drinking because it was the better choice. We saw the road branching ahead of us and took the right turn.

The more we can shout about the benefits of sober, the more people will get off the elevator before it hits the bottom.

So thank you Katie, and thanks to all of you.

Love SM x