my liver looked up and screamed "save me!", and i looked down and whispered "no"...

i've heard more than a few times people claiming that London's got a drinking problem. i never really gave it too much credence to be honest, until i was having a conversation with... um... someone - i forget whom, could have been anyone - who was saying that because you've got a strong reliance on public transport and so (relatively) few people drive, it's really easy to sink pint after pint because you don't have to drive home. certainly, there are plenty of places to get a drink in the city... in just about every area i've been in so far. it hasn't helped that "going out for a drink" has become one of my main passtimes since i came here. it's the social aspect. you meet up with some people, you find a pub or a bar and you sit around over a few beers.

friday night i was out for tea with Cam's Vegan Meetup group and where did we go afterwards? the second-nearest pub (the nearest was too full) for a few beers. saturday night? out with louise to meet up with some of her friends. we met at a pub. then headed for a house-party. then another pub. sunday? pub, then a Walkabout.

i was supposed to be going to a movie session at Adnan's on Saturday, but cancelled at the last minute. there were a couple of reasons for this, but primary of them was thus: louise and i had a rough-patch leading up to NYE. we've sorted the worst of oyur shit out and are not getting along great again, so when she invited me to come and hang with her friends i thought that in the interest of better relations i really should go along for the ride. it was a good night which ended in a rowdy pub in Chiswick which was having a pre-pre-Australia Day party. we went pretty hard, which was dumb, but fun, although we still got back to base-camp at a reasonable hour.

why was having a big night Saturday dumb? because we both knew that Sunday was going to be fucking stupid. Australia Day was something we'd been looking forward to for ages. this year it was on a Monday which would have got in the way of having a particularly huge time, but the Walkabouts (an Australian-themed bar chain i'd managed to avoid until now) were doing it big on the Sunday to compensate. we had a plan to start in Covent Garden, meet some people, then head for the big Walkabout in Temple, on the Thames Embankment. get back to base Saturday night, get a late-night burger into us then get some sleep and be ready for a Big Fucking Day.

great plan, right?

i woke up in the morning to the sound of Louise throwing up into a plastic bag because the bathroom was occupied. she'd been ok the night before, but come morning and she was NOT in a good way. i went over, donated a hair-lacky to the cause (i've always got 3 in my hair which means there's always one i can spare) and rubbed her back until she was done and went back to bed to lie down. after waking up a bit i popped downstairs and picked her up some chips, a couple of small baguettes and some hommus - bread to settle the stomach, hommus because it's light and easy to keep down. she ate, felt a bit better, advised that she was good to go and we made our move into town.

we started easy - louise with a coke and me with a beer which i sipped. Alison, on her last day in town before flying out, and her friend Anna met us up and we footed it down to Temple to meet up with Daniel and his crew. when we got there it was Australian flags and accents as far as the eye could see, good music and a great vibe. i migrated to Snakebites and louise onto Vodka+Redbulls really fast. i honestly don't have a blow-by-blow for you, and you don't need one. as the hours ticked past we went round after round after round. we got to know Daniel's mates. Cam showed up and joined the fun for a while before heading off. louise made a stealthy escape not long before Allison and Anna, and Laura got in somewhere around 8:30ish. by this time i'd been drinking solidly for about 5 hours and Daniel and i had started swiping unattended drinks rather than heading to the bar. i found out later that she helped me to the tube station ("what are friends for?" she said later when i thanked her) and i seemed to have made it home ok from there, although i must have tripped over something somewhere because i'd grazed my knee - i didn't remember. what's that? i didn't menion eating anywhere in there? that would be because i forgot to, for the entire day. shit, you say? shit indeed.

i'll tell you what though - it was a GREAT day. still, i've made the executive decision that after 2 bouts of memory-loss in a month it's time to slow down and i've taken myself off the booze in any real way for the next little while. it IS way too easy to be drinking here. of course, that was going to happen on Australia Day regardless, but it's a habit i'll nipping in the bud here and now. i've been trying to steer my social events towards cafe's rather than bars for the last little while now in the theory that this will reduce my alcohol consumption some and this has been good so far, but i can see a serious shift towards diet-coke in my future. not that i have any intention of giving up booze wholesale, but a limit of 3 pints to an evening may be a good idea instead of the... um... i lost count at 8 or 9 on Sunday. hmm...