Summer, Soberistas and An Update

In my last post, many months ago, I bowed out of writing my regular entries to this blog other than to update you on the progress of the new Soberistas website. Well, here goes; an update!

We said July, and then it was August. Now it’s September. But finally, it seems as though we are nearly there, on the brink of launching the new Soberistas site. There’s now a designated Forum discussion page on Soberistas.com for anyone with questions about the new site – just click here to take a look. And, on the issue of the long-awaited new site, thank you so much for your patience!

A few months ago, after many a night sitting with my laptop at the dining table, I completed my latest book, The A-Z Of Binning The Booze, a comprehensive guide for helping people to achieve alcohol-free living. After what seems like an eternity (again!), the book will soon be available in eBook format, published on September 10^th 2016, and then as a paperback in January 2017 in the bookshops. Alastair Campbell very kindly took a look at my book, and had this to say about it: “This book will help anyone trying to choose sobriety over a life of alcohol dependency. Personal, passionate, convincing.” Thank you Alastair.

Summer is nearly over, and with its imminent departure comes the promise of a return to a more structured existence. The free and easy months between June and August can be a challenge to those of us who don’t drink, not least because of the ubiquitous Prosecco references in virtually every bar, restaurant and shop I’ve walked into recently. I used to find hot weather unbearable when I first quit drinking five and a half years ago; it was so tied up with beer gardens and barbecues and holidays that I always felt as though I was missing out on all the fun.

But as the sober years have passed by, so the desire to drink when the sun appears has diminished, although I’m still aware of how ‘in-your-face’ alcohol is during the summer.

Last week, I took a short trip to Naples and was struck by how very different the Italian people’s relationship with alcohol is to that of people in the UK.

Every night, we sat and watched a procession of families – young, old, multi-generational – take to the promenade and stroll along, engaged in conversation, looking happy and relaxed, and not a beer bottle or glass of fizz in sight. In the warm, evening air, teenagers joked with their friends and flirted mildly with the opposite sex, couples kissed and gazed into one another’s eyes as they leant against the ancient, stone wall that separates the promenade from the Bay of Naples, and young parents proudly pushed their babies along in pushchairs. Where is the equivalent of this in Britain? A place where people can relax and enjoy the company of their loved ones’ without feeling the need to numb their minds with alcohol? Being there restored my faith in humanity, and I came home with an even greater conviction that we do not need alcohol to have fun, or relax, or for anything else.

As human beings, in our natural states, we are lovely. We are able to communicate properly with one another, to experience emotions fully, to be dignified and proud, and to look serene and healthy. Something went badly wrong with the British culture in terms of the relationship people have with alcohol, but in Naples, I saw a different kind of socialising, a very real and beautiful display of all that we can be as human beings.

I hope you have had a good, restful and alcohol-free summer. Vive la sober revolution!

Lucy xx

Cinderella in a Restaurant

Should children be tolerated, welcomed or banned from public places? So asks the Daily Post’s ‘Weekly Writing Challenge.’ Read on for my thoughts on the matter…

There is a little plaza in the village of Fornalutx, Mallorca, where an ancient fountain bubbles away, a backdrop to the sound of the local children’s high Spanish voices squealing and laughing as they play around the old tree in the centre of the square. Their parents sit outside the tapas bars, sipping a beer or café con leche in the shadows cast by the dipping sun, talking about grown up stuff and occasionally looking over to ensure everyone is safe and behaving themselves. The atmosphere is convivial and full of humanity, a hub of community life ticking along as it has done for centuries.

On holiday in Mallorca earlier this year

In Sheffield where I live, things are a little different. For the entirety of my eldest daughter’s life, I have eaten in restaurants with her on a frequent basis. Sharing a meal out is a great opportunity for families to spend quality time talking to each other and to escape the ubiquitous mobile phones, TV’s and laptops that encroach on almost every other aspect of our lives. Because I have taken her out to dinner from just a few months old, she has always displayed good table manners and knows exactly how to behave amongst adults in a busy restaurant. When she was smaller, she would dress up in a Cinderella or Snow White costume when I took her out; now she puts make up on, wears a dress and high heels (mine, usually) and looks stunning. I am always extremely proud to walk in to any restaurant with her, knowing that her behaviour will be nothing less than perfect.

Now that I have a six-month old baby, she joins us when we eat out at restaurants. Down the road from where we live, there are a few places to eat of Mediterranean origin, and we usually choose those over more English, traditional venues, owing to the fact that we are a family with a baby. Mediterranean cultures celebrate children, and include youngsters in the conversations and social interactions that take place in restaurants and other public places. One particular aspect that I love about those cultures and the way they embrace little ones, is how the men fuss over babies and young children in such a relaxed and comfortable way – a social norm that is rarely seen in English culture. Mediterranean men seem so at ease with their masculinity and place in society, that they have no qualms about cuddling babies in public, kissing their children openly and generally demonstrating their paternal love for their families whenever they see fit. I love that!

I have never witnessed a badly behaved, bored child who is desperately trying to seek their parents’ attention, when on holiday in Mallorca, Spain or Italy. The children there are a part of whatever is going on; they are valued participants in  social gatherings of any kind, and join in the conversations with adults as equals. Or they are just allowed to let off steam, chasing each other round a big tree in a plaza, or splashing water scooped up from a fountain, until they are tired and happy to join the grown ups and their more sedate chatter. Children who feel wanted and loved do not (generally) behave badly, and children who know that they are accepted and welcomed by society as a whole when they visit public places, usually meet the expectations they understand have been placed on them, and act accordingly.

Eating out should always be about friends and family coming together to share conversation and laughter, and to cement relationships. Children are as much a part of the social equation as adults and should be treated as such by everybody. When children are listened to and respected as human beings, they are a source of endless fun and interesting banter, often more so than many of the adults to be found in restaurants!

“Five years from now, you’re the same person except for the people you’ve met and the books you’ve read.” – John Wooden, born October 14th 1910

Aged 17 – October 14, 1992

Living in the moment, never looking further than the next weekend, drifting further in to the nightclub scene. You are a raver, dressed in your cat suit and trainers; hair sleek, in a bob, lips red, aware of your femininity. Music is everything, the underground scene is hypnotic; its naughtiness and illegality is like a drug, club fliers adorn your bedroom wall replacing your posters of The Smiths and Depeche Mode. First year of ‘A’ levels, but you’ve outgrown it now, it’s a burden on your time. Life flows eternally before you, there are no worries and no cares other than a strange persuasion you have developed to almost enjoy the dark side, to wallow in your suffering and to emulate your heroine, Laura Palmer – a strange one to pick given her untimely death, preceded by a life afflicted by drug addiction and abuse.

Aged 22 – October 14, 1997

Oh, you emulated Laura alright, other than her murder – and that isn’t such an unlikely possibility these days. A recreational enjoyment of clubs and their associated pleasures has strayed in to the murky waters of grim addiction; the only friends you have are in the same boat. Thrown out of a nightclub on this, your birthday, for being so out of it; you aren’t demonstrating an ounce of care for your safety, and you don’t eat much at all. Your hair is short, your body is thin; you virtually live in a pub exclusively frequented by abusers of alcohol and drugs. You’re going down, down, down…

Aged 27 – October 14, 2002

Dragged out of the sinking sand by the arrival of your gorgeous baby girl, she is now three years old and the apple of your eye. Her Dad, your husband, is busy working all the hours God sends – mostly you spend time with your friends. When your baby is in bed, you drink; it’s not so much, a few bottles of beer or a bottle of wine with a meal, and at the weekend it’s more. There are parties and nights out with girlfriends, where drinking is the thing to do, drinking enough to occasionally act in a way you regret. But the regrets are few and far between, life is for the living, mortality is a concept that, so far, you don’t acknowledge. One year left of your degree – studying is time well spent, an effort to establish a foundation on which to some day build a career. That day might come sooner than you think; your marriage is almost done.

Aged 32 – October 14, 2007

Ooh, happy birthday you! Four years since the breakdown of your marriage, things are no longer so pretty. Wine is a staple of your existence – it tends to your every emotion; happy, sad, bored, depressed, lonely…drinking in company is getting harder – the necessary control over the amount you consume is a struggle. Your self esteem has taken a battering, over and over again there’s an action that you regret or words you wished had been left unsaid. Your office job bores you to tears, there should be more to life than this – drinking is an aid to forgetting. Relationships are hard to sustain, difficult to work out. Being a mother keeps your head out of the water, but the current is strong and it’s dragging you down.

Aged 37 – October 14, 2012

Just under four weeks from now, I will turn 37. On numerous occasions during my life, I have wondered whether I would live as long as this. Many times my thoughts turned to suicide; I never fully grasped the notion as a plan of action, but the tendency to ponder whether life should ever be this arduous, this painful, was ever present for a long time. My little girl consistently provided the reason why life is always worth it, no matter how tough things become, and for that, as well as for a myriad of other reasons, I am eternally grateful that I have her in my world. She saved me.

As every five year interval in my life passed, things did not seem to change direction much. I was sitting in a boat, adrift in an ocean of depression and misunderstanding of what life is about, carried along on a current of self-destruction and pity, never looking far enough in to the distance to seek out another way. Until a couple of years ago.

This last five year interval represents a series of events that have gently prodded and pulled me, this way and that, tugging me in to a place that is warm and happy and safe. It’s a place  I never thought I would find myself in – where the walls of depression and self-hatred have crumbled away to leave an open space, full of endless possibilities. It’s the place where I have found my soul mate, had my second daughter, and truly arrived at the realisation of what my life should be. I never want to leave this place behind.

Things are on the up – my eldest daughter and me in Newquay last summer, showing off my recently bought engagement ring.