Recently I was delighted to be invited on a weekend away.
I was delighted for two reasons, first it was the stag weekend of my chum Ru and it thus marked the fact that his and HP’s three-hundred year long engagement was finally coming to an end and they would, at last, become man and wife. If that isn’t a source of delight I don’t know what is. Hurrah!
The second reason for my delight was the fact that I would be travelling to a remote Scottish pile with the intention of partying the weekend away with a bunch of like-minded people. Double-hurrah!
I’ll spare you the details of the weekend’s debauchery – there’s nothing duller than hearing people’s puking-in-bucket stories – so I’ll only say that it involved a lot of Guinness, flagons of cider and a veritable lake of sweet Greek red wine. And I woke up extremely hoarse and with a very sore hand from playing the bongos all evening.
Some people like to go away for detox-weekends to get wrapped in honeycomb & seaweed balm and have warm stones needlessly put on their backs. But this weekend was universally agreed to be the polar opposite (and infinitely more fun) and so was duly christened the “retox weekend”.
Sadly, perhaps, I’m not eighteen any more and I have to confess that the weekend did take it out of me. I even managed to fall asleep on the way back in the passenger seat of Brian’s fancy two-seater. With the roof down. In the cold Highland air. With Brian’s not-exactly-pedestrian driving.
So all well and good – a few Alka-Seltzers later and I was feeling fighting fit again.
The day after saw me making my usual pilgrimage up to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary for my seven-month MOT. After the usual tests I was ushered into the registrar’s room to be congratulated on my Hb1ac of 6.5% (down from 6.1% last time, bah! (yes, I am very smug about it)) and to be told that my urine sample had shown traces of blood.
I’m pissing blood? Oh crap!
My registrar told me this was nothing much to worry about but I couldn’t help fretting about impending liver failure or the imminent and catastrophic destruction of my kidneys (don’t lie, we all do that at 3am). But she suggested we re-did the tests in a fortnight or so just to double-check.
So that’s what we did and, dear readers, you’ll be relieved to hear that all was absolutely fine.
They say that diabetes is one of the healthiest afflictions to have – after all, who else gets very regular hospital check ups and has their eyes checked twice a year? But the weekend made me think of all the damage we do to our bodies every time we have a drink.
Should I stop drinking – or maybe reduce my intake to a small glass of champagne at Christmas and maybe a few liquor chocolates on my birthday? It would be far, far healthier.
But then I though “fuck it”, rang round our friends and organised a piss-up in pub tomorrow night. The evening will probably involve lots and lots of sweet Greek red wine. Cheers!