Where's North?

Walking back the through the village to our house Grace, 4, suddenly asks 'Where's North, Daddy?' I'm usually good at unravelling concepts for children but this one is hard. I wave my arm vaguely across the fields to our right where rain looks to be pressing in to ruin our day. 'Over there, where those clouds are. Do you see?' 'Can I go there?' 'Not really darling. It's a direction.' Hopeless. 'You remember how I told you that we live on a giant ball. Well when we walk up that ball we're going North.' Still no good.

32 Toyota Tankfuls

On most days of the week we both finish work work around five and then switch straight over to childcare, which goes on until at least nine. Or maybe one of us is working later. Either way there's no let up, for either of us. This hefty routine has been going on, on and off, in my life since the early 1970s and the sheer exhaustion you feel on the last leg is the surest way to alcohol dependence. It starts with a single glass of wine, just enough to neutralise the buzz and get you smiling at each other. Quite soon this becomes two and from being an undiscerning quaffer of plonk you begin to know a little about wine. The idea of dependence doesn't occur to you - it's just a way of making a hugely stressful experience manageable, enjoyable even. Supper time is fun. You give yourself to bath time. You are present when you're reading the story and could even recount it if asked. And there's the thought of what's left in the bottle for that quality time together later on.

I stopped drinking completely nearly three years ago - not a drop since apart from a couple of glasses of Prosecco at our wedding and even this made me feel rough the next day. What struck me was how STRONG it was and what shocked me was how much of it I must have drunk in the previous 35 years. When I stopped I was drinking about a bottle of wine a day, not excessive by alcoholic standards, but then what exactly constitutes alcoholic? I had been trying to stop for a while until one day was just the right day to go for it. Why stop? Because something I'd thought was making me more present was doing the opposite, cumulatively, over a long period of time. Not that I was ever drunk. More that I realised that effect of alcohol never really left me. I can't say, at the end of a long day of work work and childcare that not having a drink has made me feel that different. Once past the sense of achievement it's DAY ONE of the rest of your life. But my older children tell me I'm different, less emotionally absent, easier to communicate with and I suppose they'd know. I do miss good red wine though. But a bottle of wine every night for 30 years? At 12% alc that's 12% 0.75 litres x 365 days x 30 years = 985.5 litres of pure alcohol - or put another way - 32 Toyota Avensis Tankfuls. That's a lot.