By the Gavin and Stacey finale, the drinks wreckage littering our front room on Christmas Day looks like Smithy’s pre-stag. Empty bottles of wine, lager and fizzy rose are liberally dabbled with cocktail tins and cider flagons, in a heap that might usually have our Xbox’s camera colluding with Alexa to order an emergency Amazon stomach pump. Yet I peruse the pile with the clarity of Smithy’s wedding day. Because these were all non-alcoholic beverages, and I am on a mission to have a happy – but definitely not merry – Christmas.
How did I get here, to my first ever dry Yule? Generally, all I want for Christmas is booze. Well, note to Musk: one of the major flaws in the human body, hopefully solvable by technological enhancement, is that it isn’t synchronised with our digital diaries. It doesn’t know that we’re scheduled to be getting out-of-body drunk at Gina’s festive Bring Your Own Bathtub Death Gin party next week, and to hold off any major mechanical breakdowns until the new year. And so it was that the odd internal thump, bump and twinge insisted that I stop drinking for a while, just six weeks before Christmas. Dry January? Make mine a Desober.
