Cheers to the bank holiday weekend....

Last night I attended a 'Doctor's mess' party with one of my all time best friends (when I say attended, I mean tried to sneak in through the side door so as to skip paying* , got all over the 'all you can drink' Pimms**, danced as if no one was watching for an extended amount of time***, and exited in a taxi with my friend, who insisted we went home via the McDonalds Drive-Thru. Win.)

As always it was a joyful and hilarious evening, despite the guilt pangs which seemed to creep up on me every time I poured a glass of rosé. (Yes, ROSE, we've established now I'm a not a girl of the highest class. Sometimes I even put ice cubes in it, how do you like that?!) This guilt, however, does not come from any suppressed concerns I have for my levels of alcohol consumption, as I'm happy to pour as much wine into myself as my dad pours into the pasta sauce (rather a lot) while knowing that my still quite young body can deal with it as efficiently as a Sunny D factory can process the shittiest dregs of concentrated orange and make it into something good again. Well, good tasting at least - the Sunny D, not me. I'm saving up my health concerns for at least another year and then I will definitely start taking care of myself through maturing into a macro-diet eating yoga obsessive butterfly...

But back to last night's rosé; I quickly became aware of how loaded with shame I felt indulging in some evening frivolities while discussing with my friend my lack of employment status and feeling of being redundant: which I now undeniably am, in so many ways. I'm terrified of being sucked into the vortex of liquid lunching, pub garden hanging and vino catch-ups, which are readily available occupations now that I have no professional one and as I am lucky enough to have many friends who are still students or work shifts. I find it hard to say no to a get together at the best of times but after a morning of trawling through job ads and trying to think of new ways to write: 'I'm really great, honestly, give me a job, please' it's near impossible. 

And then the cogs started moving in my brain and I remembered an article I had read in May's issue of ELLE Magazine recently which was arguing that giving ourselves such a hard time about our drinking habits and forcing ourselves in sobriety may not be so productive after all, as we are denying ourselves the opportunity to relax, speak a little more freely and churn over things with friends and colleagues in casual, dimly lit, slightly sticky surroundings. I could reel it off in quotes but I won't, the article clearly goes into much greater and more articulate depth than my synopsis, but you get the gist. (Check it out, it's amazing, written by April Long, p.49 May ELLE)

Ok, I know I said I wouldn't reel off quotes... but here's just one:

"People who drink tend to go out more than non-drinkers - and isolation and loneliness, it turns out, are far worse for the constitution than knocking back one too many G&T's from time to time. One study found that living like a hermit is as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and twice as harmful as obesity; another concluded that people who have a wide network of confidants have a 50 per cent higher survival rate than those that don't. It's surely no mistake that so many glasses the world over are clinked 'to health'."

-April Long, May ELLE, p.49 ♥

Something inside me did a little dance when I read this, because it all just made so much sense. I am simply at my happiest when I am engrossed in a good rant or laugh or cry even, with a great friend, wine glasses clutched and remainder of bottle in bucket. The wine is clearly not the clinching factor here, although it is handy in aiding the slightly freer flow of conversation and coaxing out of well kept secrets; (I was blessed to be born void of all addictive tendencies and have to try hard to get myself that deep into something, perhaps facebook and past boyfriends as exceptions.) it is my friends who I can not live without, and these hours of laughing hysterically at the once unamusing, tragic incidences and then methodically dissecting every fabricated, pointless (usually man related) issue which we've flustered ourselves over that week. These are the times which generate the incredible ideas, most brilliant realisations and cement the most priceless of friendships and I doubt I would be who I am without this education.

So I feel no shame in accepting that a few glasses of wine at lunch, or a night dancing with my eyes closed to Rihanna or losing an evening in a pub garden will, rather than lead me into the unemployed gutter, quite possibly keep me sane, keep ideas flowing and possibilities endless. 

What's more, I could of bagged myself a Doctor at last night's mess party: which would potentially be a most excellent solution to my little redundancy problem! I didn't though, unfortunately. Must have been the dancing...

*Don't worry I didn't get away with it... come on though I'm facing cold, harsh unemployment here everyone. Times are hard.
**Which subsequently got all over me
***They definitely were, with pained expressions


Here's one more wise ELLE snapshot for my friends, because I love you all and you've been simply wonderful since my world started going a bit wonky.