It's my Birthday... why am I sober?

29th March 2009

One of the things I promised myself when getting involved with this whole White Collar malarky was cutting out the beer. Not totally of course (I'm not insane) but not doing what most people do in Dubai which is replace your blood with alcohol for most of the weekend!

As yet I have, in 2 and a half weeks, only had the equivalent of about 3 pints, after food and purely as a social thing. I'm actually quite enjoying being sober - especially as I watch the not so sober around me! You begin to realize that actually when your drunk your a bit of a dickhead and girls that you may have thought attractive while drunk are actually much less attractive, especially with their eyes rolling around in their heads and unable speak properly.

Also, consequently, the flat next door is pissing me off with it's weekly parties that seem to just involve people cheering, constantly, for no apparent reason. A guest asks "Oi mate - where's the toilet - I need a piss?". The host is overjoyed at this major event in his life "Oi everybody - Gav's gonna go for a PISS - YAAAAAAY! - ave one for me son - YEEEAH" The whole party takes up a chorus of celebration of the mighty bladder until the next fascinating celebratory event... "Hey - Sandrine just vommed off the balcony, fell off and landed in it - WAAAAAY"

Multiply this by fifty until 3am and these are my neighbours... dickheads.

Then I realise - maybe I'm going off alchohol, whinging about my neighbours and training frantically to become something I've always wanted to be because I'm having a mid-life crisis. is this why people do white collar? I'm 34 today and what am I doing? I'm up at 6am punching bags in some sort of 'do it before you can't' mindset. I contemplate this as I finsh my 25th 'crunch' and then think 'no'. This is'nt a crisis - this is something I've always wanted to do and it's just taken me this long to get to it... life's a bit mental you know and other stuff gets in the way sometimes!

So yeah, I'm 34 today, I'm training at 6am on my birthday and weirdly loving it. I'm not going out tonight to celebrate (I'm 34 - what's to bloody celebrate?) so for the first time in years I won't have a crappy hangover tomorrow and I might well adopt this whole new attitude for beer for a long time after the white collar fight night.

Plus, with regards to my 'oikish' neighbours I've decided I'm not getting old... I've just always had a low tolerance threshold for cheering dickheads.