Good Cheer

Alcohol has always been my drug of choice. Despite my teenage years starting in 1968 - and everybody knows the sixties really happened in the seventies (especially in rural Leicestershire!) - I was a social misfit and not part of the sub-culture that had access to weed or amphetamines, much less LSD. I would in any case have been too cowardly to experiment with them

Alcohol was socially acceptable, part of my family background, reduced my anxiety around social interaction, and an integral part of some of the rites of passage on my particular path from childhood to manhood

I have drunk to excess - to the point of being physically sick (even in my sleep), not remembering events from the previous night, being incapacitated by after-effects the next day. I have driven cars while drunk, and fallen asleep at the wheel. In conversation with other men, these things are treated as amusing - unless something happens that means they are not. I've been undeservedly lucky

I'm also lucky that I've never craved alcohol in the irresistible way that true addicts crave their fix - and I do think it's luck, not any kind of merit or moral superiority, just a throw of the genetic and environmental dice

We have adopted self-imposed rules that we do not drink alcohol at all on 3 nights a week. I recognise the feeling that "I feel like a drink tonight - a pity it's Tuesday", but my nature is such that the feeling is not strong enough to over-rule my choice. I can't emphasise too much, how I believe this is a matter of luck. Not just the luck of my genes and upbringing, but how different might it be if I was living with constant stress, unhappy relationships, fear of poverty or failure, bitter regret, heartbreak, pain? I have no superiority to anyone who relies on mind-altering substances to get through the day, or becomes captured by their power

And on four nights a week we do drink. Not so much that I can't remember to lock up at bedtime, or tidy the kitchen, or take my prescribed drugs as well; not so much that I can't write a blip and try to get the grammar right. But enough to feel the psychological impact and enjoy the mild euphoria and the artificial enhancement of my self-esteem - that, in the end, is the point

We grow apples, so we make cider - enough to drink a glass every couple of weeks. I would not want more - really, I prefer beer - but it's pleasing to have produced something that looks and tastes this good. The sunlight on the wall in the background only happens for a few weeks a year in these moments before sunset. The wall faces north, north east and is shaded by the main part of the house from which I'm taking the picture, so it does not get the morning light, only these few moments when the setting sun is reaching far into the north west. It's nice to have captured it

The brewery does not produce cider, so it's a bit of a cheek to play contrived games with its tower in a glass of home-brew. If they ever see it, I'll tell them I was the worse for drink