Just one day to go, and to be quite frank I would relish another month off the sauce. I feel better, livelier, fresher and ready to do it all again. I have never slept so well.
All lies of course, I feel broken, dull and purposeless and can barely wait to uncork the first one. I spend most of my time trying to decide what to kick off with first. A Refosco? A Barbera d'Asti? A sodding big Plymouth Gin and Tonic? I could do worse than get one of these down at 7.30 tomorrow morning. It was a present from my extremely butch mountain-trekking mate Renato whose speciality is searching out protected plants in the Italian Alps, ripping them out of the ground, and stuffing them into a bottle that he then fills up with half-decent supermarket grappa. This particular plant is called Iva and is only found above 6,000ft (apparently). It is just ever-so-slightly flowery and very clean. Yum yum, pig's bum.
