Of Heaven and Hell

The elusive fourth blog post. My mate Dom predicted a while back that I would go the way of many other well-intentioned blogs and abandon the idea after realising that nobody was interested and it was merely a pointless self-serving exercise that makes me think that people are laughing with me when really they are commiserating my certain failure. But if I gave up every time somebody started to get sick of me, I would've walked straight back out of my first day at school the moment I realised that my impassioned wailing wasn't drawing attention anymore. But I stayed there. I wet myself. But I stayed there. And I plan on staying here too. Just like my Irish mates taught me too.

In an effort to start getting serious about my health for this thing, the 2 weeks leading up to last weekend signalled my first ever attempt to abstain from alcohol for a set period of time. I've always giggled at the irony of Priests sprouting abstinence as the gate to heaven, when to me denying yourself something you really, really, really want is my idea of hell. But far from being the hellish experience of withdrawal and temptation that I'd predicted, I breezed through it and even managed to dodge the vodka grenades that the lovely guys at work had dropped into my lemonade. Who said you couldn't have fun with drink-spiking?

I know 2 weeks is only a baby commitment, but I also had an adult commitment to go and get myself obnoxiously drunk at both a farewell on Friday, where I attempted to spike both Kate and Laura's drinks, and an after-cricket-final-lets-get-as-drunk-as-humanly-possible-because-we-lost event. But, and even with the mature questioning of my sexuality from Jim and his mate Phil still ringing in my ears, I've since vowed to stay off the drink completely until the 29th of August.

I definitely feel better for it already, although like a true ex-addict who replaces the sharp prick of a shared needle with the quick fixes of a rambling evangelical or bottomless cups of coffee, I've taken to drinking far too much soft drink. So I no longer have it in the house. What's the next addiction? Probably Porn. Or Gambling. You have to buy into the whole addict lifestyle if you want to blog about it.

So now it's back to the gym properly. I opened my Gym bag yesterday and thought I'd smelt the Apocalypse, which indicates it was either a very long time since I've opened that bag or a very long time since I've washed my gym kit. I'd say a combination of the two is closer to the mark. I'm back to the gym tonight. And considering my arms are still stiff after having swung a light cricket bat on no more than 17 occasions on Sunday, it may be 2 or 3 weeks before I'm able to type again. Which would no doubt please Dom, as there is only one thing he likes more than talking about his family link to the Blue Wiggle, and that's recalling how he knew something that has just happened was going to happen long before it ever did.