WTF is this?

I was in a bar when the bloods came through. The results leered from the dashboard on other side of the Mac-glass. My friend Jonny walked in. I remember looking up to say “Hey man, my liver’s shot; can’t do beers today” nanoseconds before the monkey voice started screaming.

The sun was shining. I would be in the West End later that day. But that day would no longer be a coffee meeting segueing into beers and then martinis and whiskies. It was going to be London at its worst.

The fear began to rise. Some of the graphs had no results on. My numbers didn’t fit. Average: 30; Danger: 50; Me: ‘out of range’. The numbers themselves weren’t worrying, they can (probably) be fixed – stop drinking, easy. I was pretty good at drinking, I could be pretty good at stopping. No, the numbers were pretty good. In the centre of the head-storm was the real twister: WTF am I going to drink now?

“I’m not doing that, too scared” said Jonny when I broke out. I half wished I had thought that before I filled a test-tube with blood. As I write, it’s March. The next eight months of events are meticulously planned to enable maximum drinking pleasure. The whole town where I live relies on the efficient conversion of prosecco to ethanol to acetaldehyde to acetate.

I was lost. My usual London patch seemed out of bounds. I couldn’t face coffee shops and their foul over-stretched espresso. Mocktails, orange and lemonade, club soda and shit lime are not on my acceptable ways to spend money list. The streets I walked overflowed with smiling, happy people clutching frosty beers, chinking chilled wine glasses, posing with over complicated martinis. It was only a matter of time before I cracked and raised a frosty tank beer as a big fuck you to the stock-photo-fake-a-doc who had delivered the bad news.

I stared with a strange mix of pity and scorn at a designated driver drinking his designated coke. He looked my way and every muscle in his face begged “Help Me”. Then, the epiphany: No wonder the poor fools who don’t / can’t / won’t drink are so fucking miserable; they’re held hostage by a fucking miserable drinks menu.

The mission began.