what not to do

after all these months of constant bike training is go on a two day drinking spree. but my knees still creak, the weather's awful and i've spent friday at the funeral of the man whose house i grew up in. not only that his wife has out me on suicide watch for the sage, her remaining son. i feel dutiful, but not happy.

so off to argyll it is. as i've not been drinking ialong time i'm not going to waste my palate on decent vodka (tho later i wish i would have) so i get into some of this new russian standard stuff. i'm not hopeful, the bottle's just a bit too much, as if it's concealing something.which it is. and it's not very nice. what has happened in the world of vodka these last few months? along with tescos decision not to stock ketel one (as a result i buy all their remaining stock as i'm not about to pay thirty quid for a bottle of grey goose in this lifetime). stoli is now cheap, cheaper than this russian standard stuff, if only marginally better and wyborowa has gone up by about 50%. it's inexplicable. and that's before the zubrowka debate.....

and off we drink. i settle back to geo's tales of forests and geology and we're in fine form when fragile steve pitches up for the guitar playing. which we do, but it's the death talk that's into me and the boy geo, and we haven't had a session for a while, so the night's still not too far advanced before he starts me on the war stories and all the dead people come marching out of my skull. i can make a bad story funny but really geo's laughing because he's not me and we both know it and i'm glad for him. it's an old routine and we're so into it we don't notice fragile steve who was looking at me like some sort of awful person even before he moved onto the cask strength macallan and a bad whitey

it takes me a couple of days to get over the toxicity. was this what it was like when i was drinking? give me a day on the bike any time...

and the sage? recovers lazarus like from the funeral. tears dried, good intentions forgotten, learned nothing.