One month & two days and no alcohol

So it's been just over a month since I started on the task of an alcohol free year and if I'm totally honest, I don't really notice that I'm not having a drink.

I have given the proviso that on special occasions I can, if I want to, have a few alcoholic beverages.  However having celebrated both my husband's birthday and our wedding anniversary already in January, both passing without a tipple, I don't really see me actually bothering.

Of course, I say that now...however my birthday is towards the end of June, by which time I will be almost half way through the year.  

Mind you, one would hope I wouldn't do a repeat of my 18th birthday celebrations.  Like many, I started going pubbing and clubbing by the age of 16.  By 17, and upon passing my driving test, I preferred to be the designated driver, much to my Father's dismay, as I always had the car.  He once asked a 17 year old me why I was "always the one who had to borrow a car for the night?"...he couldn't argue with my answer of "I'm the only one who can enjoy a night without drinking and I like to see all my friends home safely" (can you tell what a geek of a teenager I was!?!)

So when it came round to my 18th birthday, I hadn't drank in seven months.  Mad Dog 20/20 was all the rage - this was my first time of trying it!  Some would say it was consuming 4 bottles in less than an hour.  Some would say it was only having a glass of milk and a Dairylea triangle lining my stomach was the issue.  Some would say it was the moon rising in the wrong sign.  I'm going to go with the combination of all over the above.

Stood in Times Square (pub in Warrington, not exciting place in New York) playing the Crystal Maze game (I was obsessed with it) and I passed out briefly before standing up and continuing playing - now THAT'S dedication!

I wasn't well shortly afterwards and the girls had to take me home (well, I was staying at a friends).  I remember one trying to get my contact lens' out.  The night was written off.  It was about half nine.  

I'd love to say my lesson was learnt...but it wasn't.  Hangovers get harder as you get older. They get even worse when you have children because no longer do you have the luxury of staying in bed, dying.  I honestly think one of the hardest things to do is to deal with a young child after a heavy night, having had only a couple of hours sleep, and whilst you are both still drink and also sobering to get your hangover...I'm sure I'm not the only parent who knows what I mean there...

Isn't memory strange...

About 20 minutes ago, I was looking through some photographs of my former childhood BFF, smiling at photographs of her parent's farmhouse that I'd spent many an hour at as a child.

Memories came flooding back...smells...sights...playing with magnets near a very early computer screen...newborn lambs being placed in the low cooler oven of the range cooker...pretty much the idyllic country childhood memories.  The hours the pair of us spent walking the villages and countryside around where we lived.  Playing in becks and streams, in fields and woods...even swapping over the bicycles of our boyfriends once out of sight because she wanted my bf's BMX and I wanted her bf's Raleigh racer.

Aged 11 we headed off to Grammar school together, and due to luck with our surnames, remained in the same class.  Sadly, as often do, children fall out for one reason or another, but if ever asked, she will always have been referred to as my childhood BFF (as the term now is).

Two years later we moved away, I made new friends and life went on in the place I'd left behind.  It wasn't until years later that we found each other through Friends Reunited.  We planned to meet up, something happened that day and I couldn't make it...she then moved to the other side of the world.  

Thankfully Facebook has proved what it's good at...keeping people in contact, even if it's just the odd comment here and there.

So I was looking through these photographs and come across a completely beautiful photograph of my BFF and two other girls from the Grammar school, taken at the wedding of one of them.  Here were three grown up girls who have been best friends for 25 years...I've seen other photographs that indicate it's proper friendship, they've been there for each other all throughout that time.  Three smiles beam out of that photograph and I would defy anyone to find themselves not also be smiling if they viewed it - it's just one of those photos.

...but then it made me just a teensy bit sad.  Sad because I don't have that...

Don't get me wrong, I have lots of friends, hell, even a load of really really close friends, something I feel very lucky to have...but no-one from school days...not that has been there since then.  I don't have a friend that I played with as a child, that I learnt with as a teen, that I got drunk with as a late teen, that shared loves, losses and bad perms with...that then moved on to growing up, getting married and (for me) children.  

Closest I come to is from in my very early 20s and to be honest, they are family - does that count!?! LOL!

So am I missing out?

Do many have childhood friends still very much in their lives?  Or do you only know them through the medium of things like Facebook?  Maybe you don't have any in your life at all?

When I look back at the photograph after these thoughts have been racing around, I realise that most likely it's only actually my former childhood BFF who would even remember my name.  We had two years together before entering big school, and I stayed for only two before we moved.  I wasn't popular.  I was quite picked on.  I sooooo wanted to be liked.  I doubt staying would have changed any of that.

I shall go back to looking at the photograph and feeling happy for the ladies on it...so pleased that they have what they have.  I'm not bitter or jealous...I just can't help wondering that if we'd stayed, would I have been there too? :-)

Maybe sometime in the future I can get to one of the reunions and have a drink and a catch up...I think I'd like that...