Afternoon Shipmates, Sid and I have had a lazy morning, getting back into routines and resetting appliances (power cut while we were away, ho ho ho).
I tend to stay off AF options when out and about - like @Lavrander says - I find they trigger in me a longing for the real stuff. My problem also was that I did not drink because I liked the taste - it was to numb reality. I am quite partial to an AF Peroni now and again, but that's it really. I stick to soft drinks generally.
New Years Eve will generally find me and Sid tucked up before the midnight hour. I do like to go out in the street (not in PJs though) and see if any fireworks are going off and say happy new year to my neighbours. I used to go to my local pub every year and see it in in the town square. Probably would be a bit expensive these days, and the new landlords aren't great.
The most memorable one was some years ago now. It was in the pub function room and was a party combined with a wedding reception for some people I was in the church choir (yes, really) with. It was back in the day when my DB and I lived at home with our parents. My DB was only recently 18. I was set on not really drinking as the bride had been an utter, utter b~tch to me and others, including splitting me and my boyfriend of the time up (and then pretending to console me about it, grrr), and I didn't trust myself not to say what I thought when tipsy. And petty, younger me didn't want to drink at the free bar they'd provided.
My DB, however, had no such qualms. He engaged in a drinking competition with his friends, also in the church choir, and the fallout was rapid and epic. Just before midnight I finally managed to haul him out (with the aid of the church organist). We stayed for the chimes, only to witness another boozy herbert try to climb up the town square Christmas tree, getting two-thirds of the way up, before falling backwards out of the tree and landing on the infant school's nativity crib scene, crushing it and being impaled on a donkey. Ambulances were called. I half-marched/dragged my reeling DB the mile's walk home during which he (a) threw up; (b) suggested that we smash the chippie's shop window ("to steal their beautiful chips") and (c) begged me to conceal his drunkenness from our parents (both staunch church-goers and missionary-workers).
I quietly got him settled in the recovery position on the downstairs sofa, placed an Alka-Seltzer on the table and a bowl by his head and crept to bed, grateful that peace had finally descended undetected. Only to hear him, about 20 minutes later, kick open my parents' bedroom door and loudly bellow "GUESS what I've been doing?!!" No fewer than six letters of apology had to be written (by him, in extreme mortification) to various members of the church community (including clergy) for what he'd (unknown to me) said to people during the party. A rare occasion where I was not the drunken miscreant; but nonetheless terrible to behold.
There's a lesson there, kids. 🙄🤔
Thank you for the info about the Titanic Museum in Belfast @postcard - I'm sorry it was a disappointment. There's a company offering a "fully interactive VR Titanic experience" in London at the moment. There were posters all over the tube for it when I went to the V&A a few weeks ago. I was sorely tempted but upon visiting the company's OWN website it looks woefully poor, bordering on offensive. I will definitely check out the history podcast though. Below is a part of my own little collection - a memorial postcard from 1912 that was sold at the time to raise money for the survivor relief funds. A distant relative of Sid's was aboard the Titanic. He, like many of the unfortunate humans aboard, survived the sinking but perished in the icy waters after she'd finally gone under.
Strength and courage shipmates. We have lives worth living, and living free. We're going to make it, you and I. It will be alright. xx