One Year Off Booze.

Let’s look at how it’s been.

On this day last year, I was driving home with my kids from the country after a weekend with some of my best friends in the whole wide world. We all have kids the same age who get along so well. We drank cocktails while they ran free, building dens from sticks and playing hide and seek among the trees, like we were in the pages of a novel about a life so lovely you’d hardly believe it could be real. The perfect picture of childhood. I laughed so much that weekend. We all took turns to cook. I’d just finished MasterChef, so for dinner I made them my final dish: salt-baked trout. A huge, impressive feast we ate as we raised our glasses and shared stories of joy, past and present. It was dreamy, every single second of it.

On the drive home, I felt heavy. The kids and I were chatting and laughing, but I was mostly wondering whether I’d get Wotsits or Monster Munch from the service station, or probably both. I didn’t feel sick, just low. After all that joy, the thing I was taking home was anxiety and dread. We reached Stone Henge and looked to our left as we wondered how the stones got there and why, and then there was this quiet but determined internal voice that simply said, ‘You’re done. No more booze.’

Stone Henge had spoken.