Call the Midlife (5 page)

Can we drink?

‘A little, yes. More than a little I cannot condone. Not that I don’t indulge myself. I do and I love it, one of life’s great pleasures as far as I’m concerned. If you want to put a figure on it, I can only officially sanction a glass (or two at absolute most) of wine a day. This has been proven to be good for the heart and head when it comes to reducing levels of stress and anxiety. More than that though and you’re on your own.’

And with that my time was up.

Thanks Doc.

‘Next!’

Drinking

Top Ten Questions Most Likely to Drive You Mad If You Keep Thinking About Them Too Much:

There are more questions than answers.

Wrong!

There are more answers than questions. Answers are reactive whereas questions are proactive, which means they are more original and therefore more difficult or effortful and burdensome to think up.

That said, I love questions. I wander around all day, every day, wondering out loud what, why, when, where, how, how come. Questioning things makes me feel at peace because it’s indirectly telling me I’m giving my life the time and space it needs to breathe. When I’m too busy or too distracted I never question anything.

Constantly questioning things is also the reason I have trouble getting through books. Or even getting through a single paragraph of a book. Sometimes there’s little if anything I can do to prevent my
mind wandering off to the great thought bubble in the sky. Perhaps this is how come my subconscious master planner has become so adept and efficient over the years.

We really don’t need to concern ourselves with the exhausting process of ‘coming up’ with an answer if we feed in the question thoroughly enough. We are full of answers like a vending machine is full of snacks. What we need is the correct change and item number to access whatever it is we’re after.

Again, once we have properly and earnestly worked on feeding in the question, quiet, breathing and relaxation is all we need to ‘hear’ the answer.

As a result of affording myself fair old slabs of all three of those prerequisites over the years, three subsequent ‘answers’ have made themselves known to me:

What does all this mean?

I am yet to have my heart broken in adulthood, having had it smashed to pieces as a kid.

I am very happy in my own company but ideally like to be on my own while still around other people. That is to say I am happy alone but preferably not on my own.

For years, my favourite three things in life were women, cars and alcohol.

Which is fine where women and cars are concerned but when alcohol is thrown into the mix – that’s when the situation can get a little sticky.

The problem with waking up when the ‘beer buzz’ is still in full effect is its endless optimism. The false hope that gives rise to a thousand new beginnings, not a single one of which has even the slightest suggestion of how it might end.

The beer buzz is one of the world’s most uncelebrated catalysts. All the possibility with not a whiff of sustainability or exit strategy.

My own casebook of evidence includes the morning I bought a massive house in Chelsea, which I never moved into, before selling it to George Michael, who also never moved into it, before selling it to Puff Daddy, who never moved into it either. Were we all beer buzzing at the time?

Add to that various major car purchases, like the time Tash and I were particularly buzzing one morning in Italy and decided to go to bid on James Coburn’s old Ferrari California Spyder. The day before I had no intention of going anywhere near the car. It was tatty and scratched and I hadn’t researched it AT ALL. But waking up with the beer buzz negated all that and . . . two hours later, there I was sitting at the front with my hand in the air as the hammer went down.

My beer-buzz scenario ofter involves the presence of a female. A Bonnie to my Clyde, if you like. Almost literally, as my love for and fascination with the opposite sex is down to the likes of the great actresses of the world: Julie Christie, Joanna Lumley, Anne Bancroft, Beatrice Dalle. As my love of cars is down to
Magnum, P.I.
,
The New Avengers
(Ms Lumley again!),
The Professionals
,
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
and of course 007, James Bond. But it was only in writing this book that I realized my love of alcohol is also down to love of the silver screen, i.e. the first 18-rated movie I ever went to see:
Arthur
.

We need to talk about Arthur.

Until I ‘heard’ the answer one day, all I could recall when it came to analysing my history with booze was that for as long as I could remember I had wanted to ‘take the edge off’. At the end of the day, at the beginning of a night out, after a particularly good day at work. Whether it was a cold tinny of contentment from the fridge
after a bathtime full of giggles with the kids, a glass of fine ruby-red wine to accompany a robust steak at a fancy restaurant, or a volley of shots to kickstart a bout of rebel rousing, having a drink was for years the home straight around which every twenty-four hours has revolved.

And even though I have undoubtedly managed to rein in my alcohol intake considerably during the last few years, there have still been times when it has become more of a necessary crutch than an exercise of free will.

Last year I lost my voice. No big deal usually, I know. Except for a couple of reasons where I’m concerned.

So why the concern with what alcohol might have to do with any of this?

Alcohol dries out your throat, especially at night. It causes snoring, which again is bad for the throat. As it’s a stimulant it interrupts sleep, leading to tiredness, one of the first symptoms of which is . . . ? Yup, you’ve guessed it – losing your voice. Alcohol affects energy levels, which means we are less likely to want to exercise, which in turn leads to tiredness and a weakened immune system. Which means we’ll be more vulnerable to infections and allergies. None of which is good news in life in general but especially if you have been gifted the responsibility of hosting the biggest radio show this side of the Atlantic.

After being plunged into a well of melancholy, by what I would subsequently be informed was a super virus from which it could easily have taken me up to two years to fully recover, my subconscious question machine began to scream at me in a new language.
The likes and volume of which I had never heard before:

Why was I continuing, however tentatively, to risk sabotaging everything I cherished on a daily basis so I could have a drink? Why was I happy to repeatedly dim the chances of prolonging the various aspects of this wonderful life I had been blessed with? What was that about? Surely no one in their right mind would voluntarily indulge in such ill-advised, self-destructive behaviour?

Back to the movies then.

Trading Places
enlightened me as to the existence of the stock market, as well as how grand houses can be and how cool it might be to have a big, fat, cheery chauffeur driving an even bigger and fatter car.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
gave me my first trouser movement with regards to the sublime Ferrari 250 Short Wheel Base California Spyder that then ended up in my garage (until I lost my mind one day and sold the bloody thing).

Could it be that my lifelong fascination with alcohol began with watching Dudley Moore in
Arthur
when I was fourteen?

Arthur
is such an amazing film on so many levels. It’s so escapist, hedonistic, clever and packed full of pathos. Not that I fully appreciated the pathos of Steve Gordon’s brilliant script at the time perhaps as much as would have been good for me.

‘Not everyone who drinks is a poet. Some of us drink because we’re not poets.’

One of the greatest lines in movie history as Arthur sits at the bar having ducked out of his own wedding.

Arthur
’s right up there with my other favourite films on permanent rotation:
The Graduate
,
Pretty Woman
,
Betty Blue
,
American Beauty
,
Midnight Run
,
Citizen Kane
,
It’s a Wonderful Life
and
The Godfather Trilogy
.

And the thing is I’ve always watched
Arthur
with a drink by my side, drinking along with him, laughing along with him and most of all crying along with him. The parts of the movie where Arthur’s ever-faithful butler Hobson begins to get ill and the roles become reversed have me in bits.

No sooner does the habitually mischievous and profligate Arthur
finally find a purpose and realize what life’s all about than Hobson passes away, leaving Arthur enlightened one moment and devastated and alone the next.

It’s the gentlest, most telling, perfect articulation of what it’s like to lose someone you love and not be able to do a damn thing about it. I know because I was Arthur and my dad was Hobson. I was little and young and confused and my dad was old, soft-spoken and wise. My dad slipped away gradually, day by day; in my old bedroom where I would sit on the floor and talk to him for hours about anything and nothing. Smiling up at him on the outside, fragmenting with grief on the inside, until one day I came home and he was no longer there.

He’d just gone, exactly like the scene in
Arthur
where we see Sir John Gielgud lying peacefully, before the visceral stab in our guts hits us the next time we see the bed, perfectly made but with Hobson nowhere to be seen. So gentle, yet so powerful at the same time. A moment of concise cinematic perfection.

Even more ironic when I remembered the only reason I could afford to go to watch
Arthur
in the first place was because I’d been allowed to get a part-time job following Dad dying.

‘I never want you to be alone,’ purrs the ever stoic and fiercely protective Hobson from his deathbed.

‘I know you don’t, Hobson,’ replies Arthur.

Shit, shit, fucking shit. Of course, none of us should be alone unless that’s what we want.

But the thing is I’ve thought all this before. Something that immediately caused my heart to quicken on this occasion – simultaneously causing tiny droplets of sweat to form on my forehead, the only sound I could hear was that of my blood circulating in my ears – was the realization that after going to see
Arthur
that first time, I never went to the movies again without sneaking in some form of alcohol.

‘My God,’ I thought to myself.

‘It’s only bloomin’ true.’

And it was.

Almost exclusively half a can of Seven-Up topped up with a couple of whisky miniatures, as I recalled. How could I have forgotten this? My relationship with alcohol didn’t begin when I was seventeen at the pub with those godawful, ghastly flat pints of brown over mild, served by way-out-of-my-depth gorgeous, nubile bar staff. It began a full two years before with each secret sip of sweet-tasting whisky and lemonade every time I escaped into the darkness of the movie theatre.

Blimey.

I’ve always convinced myself that I actually really enjoy the taste, the refreshment of an ice-cold beer, along with the separation it brings via an evening of calm after another hectic day full of madness, deadlines and needless self-imposed pressure. The effortless and often dreamless (which means nightmareless in my case) sleep that ensues as a result. Alcohol’s ability to anaesthetize the mind, keep worry on the doorstep, hope on the horizon.

But the truth of the situation is, as soon as the first drop of booze passes my lips, I ever so gradually disengage from myself, the world around me and everything and everyone in it. Sip by sip as the evening (drinking) develops, I begin to float away behind an invisible curtain of comfort and security. Or at least, that’s how it seems.

Wherever it is I end up feels so nice; it’s just so restful, so tranquil. It does, however, have its own Achilles’ heel. Everything is fine in Boozyland until one thing is reintroduced into the scenario. It really cannot cope with anything to do with real life. As one’s tendency to worry and care about the more nonsense aspects of being a human being is diminished, so too are all the things we need to excel or sustain or survive.

My tolerance and patience levels, for example, go out of the window, to the extent I order multiple rounds of drinks so I don’t have to wait between rounds. Likewise if there is any sign we might be moving on soon to another venue or calling it a night, I order the bill way ahead of time, as I do the taxi. Other victims include my ability to remember anything from the night that might be useful
the next day, or names or facts that might be useful on the night itself.