London Dry

As one component of what one might conceivably call my weight loss regime, I need to have three days of the week when I don't drink. And, really, that ought to be fairly easy to achieve. It doesn't have the challenge of finding the time (and, sometimes, motivation) to exercise or the frustration of trying to eat low-carb, especially away from home.

This week, I didn't have a drink on Monday, and I wasn't supposed to have one last night but then I was late picking Dan up and we decided that in order to stick to our plan of watching 'Inception', I wouldn't have time to cook, so we'd grab a curry. And, of course, I had a couple of pints of decidedly not low-carb lager while we ate, so it was a disaster on two fronts. And this is part of my problem, which is my habits: I simply can't enjoy a curry without a lager. Or, as it happens, two.

So, that meant no alcohol today. Fair enough. I took the train down to London, this morning, which is not an occasion on which I habitually drink, so there was no problem there. I had a meeting at Caffè Nero by Euston station where, as you might expect, I had a coffee and not an alcoholic beverage, and then I walked across to my hotel in Paddington.

My God but it was a lovely day, today. It was warm bordering on hot, the sun was bright, the sky was clear and the Londoners were all dressed in their summer wardrobe (a concept which doesn't properly exist in Cumbria). As I walked along the southern edge of Regents Park, I passed men in their shirtsleeves and women in cotton dresses, smiling and laughing in the sun. People sat outside coffee shops, leaning back, heads tipped towards the sky, and the trestles and pavements around the pubs were buzzing with lunchtime drinkers nurturing long glasses dripping with condensation. I looked forward to doing the same, this evening, and then remembered I couldn't.

At half-three I set off from the hotel, walking back towards the centre of London for my four o'clock meeting. Again, it's not my habit to have an alcoholic drink before a meeting, so I was still feeling fine. But after the meeting, which went very well, thankyouforasking, boy, then I really fancied a drink. Any coolness that the evening might bring had yet to arrive and the sun was beating down and I was wearing a three piece suit. The lunchtime drinkers had returned to the pubs along with those people who don't drink at lunchtimes and everybody looked like they were enjoying the best evening of the year.

Back at the hotel, I took off my jacket. I'd opened the room's tall window, earlier, and my room, which was now in the shade, was nice and cool. Coming up from the street was the sound of people talking and laughing outside the bars and coffee shops. I thought about popping out for a drink, just a slimline tonic. And that seemed intolerable. I wanted to sit outside with my book and drink a gin and tonic. Or a glass of wine. Or even, on such a sunny evening, a pint of lager. 

I texted the Minx, wondering if she'd say that I should get out and enjoy myself but she said how well I was doing and that she knew I could do it, so that both was and wasn't the answer I was looking for. In the end, I changed into my nightshirt, put all the pillows on the floor below the window and sat, reading, with the evening breeze playing around my head and shoulders. And it wasn't such a bad evening, after all.