The first time I got drunk was on the lovely green banks of the River Thames at Henley. We were there to watch my brother - who rowed in the "engine room" of the Wits University "eight" - compete at the famous regatta. The regatta is one of the social events on the English society calendar, along with Ascot and Wimbledon.
But rowing, unlike tennis or watching sleek, expensive horses thunder down emerald green turf, is a lousy spectator sport. So in between brief moments of cheering and excitement as boats race across the finish line, the spectators drink, and drink hard.
At Henley they mostly drink Pimms No 1 Cup, which is as vital to the regatta's success as jet fuel is to the British Airways Boeing 747 that had carried us all to England.For reasons that are lost in the mists of time, I was allowed to have one Pimms and then another, and the world soon took on a most pleasant hue. How warm the day was. How green the trees!
I lay on the afterdeck of the cramped little river cruiser on which we were staying and watched the puffy clouds scud past overhead in a royal blue sky. I was 16, comfortably numb, as the Pink Floyd song goes, and very, very happy, and I did not look back.Until now. This is the year of living dangerously, a year of no booze. The plan has been brewing for a while. It might be that Pimms no longer fills me with the same happiness that it did when I was 16. It might be fear of slavering hyenas at police roadblocks (and, no, Uber is not a long-term solution to going home pissed at night).
Or perhaps it's the hangovers - both real and metaphysical - and the headache and nausea and self-loathing that infuses - like bitters in a pink gin - a wasted (Ha! He said "wasted"!) day spent recovering in a hammock in the garden under the shrieking gaze of the loeries.
At a 50th birthday in the closing days of the year, a friend from my London days gave me a hug and said: "How nice to see you on form! You always could put it away."
There's nothing quite as sobering as an old friend telling you that you're, erm, unsober.Quitting the bottle is an interesting thing. Stop smoking and people pat you on the arm and say "well done!". Tell them you're not drinking and they look at you like a dog that just relieved itself on the carpet.
There have been some highlights, though. I took all the never-used champagne flutes and martini glasses - a set of six works of art - to the local charity shop. It was Saturday and I had not shaved and it is some time since I had had a haircut. I may, in fact, have looked as if I was just back from a night on the lash. "Here we go," I said to the volunteer at the shop, "I'm cleaning out all our old glasses. We don't need these anymore."
She gave me a kind smile. "One day at a time," she said.
Last weekend saw me on the road to a little railway in KwaZulu-Natal, run by a friend of mine. We took a run up to into the hills on the diesel. It was a beautiful ride, up through the wattles, high up over the valley, the train hooter echoing off the trees. Once we had returned and put the engine away for the night, he cracked open a cooler box where a quartet of Windhoek lagers rested with pearl drops of ice on the glass.
I love the sound of a beer bottle being opened - the clink of the opener on the glass, the fssssst of escaping beer, the woolly glooomp of lager being poured into a cold glass ... It was a good thing, then, that he had also brought two bottles of chilled mountain water, pumped from a natural spring high in the hills.
Later, he showed me around the railway's shunting yard where a couple of old freight wagons are waiting to be restored.
"Hey, man," I said, "how about I buy one of these wagons and restore it for you?"He thought it was a marvellous idea. So we crunched around the yard looking for a suitable freight car.
"Wait," he said, "I know ..."
There, at the bottom of the yard, is a freight car that once carried logs and tractors and sundry freight over these glowing green hills. It is wreathed in rust and needs a good going over with a scraper, then a repaint. But it has its couplers, its brake gear and air hoses, and its wheels are still good. It won't take much to get it back on the rails, so to speak.
I swung up the side and looked into the car. It was full of empty bottles. Not half full, but full. Glass bottles of all shapes and sizes. Beer bottles. Whisky bottles. Gin bottles. Wine bottles. Bottles of uncertain origin. Enough bottles to make a million more bottles.
"Holy smoke," I muttered, gazing the acres of glass glittering in the sun. Was this a sign?
My friend chortled. "I guess you're on the wagon now," he said...