Beer festival

It's the beer festival this week. I used to write about drinking a lot and I don't anymore, but I still think about it a fair bit. Although there's no doubt in my mind that not drinking has transformed my life for the better, it's only recently that I've started to think about the good bits of drinking. I'd got to the point where I couldn't even see any good bits, it was just all hate and hangovers and worse. But I miss being that person who can walk into a pub and say "jesus I need a drink", and then sit down and feel like everything is ok. I'd like to be sat down the beer festival right now, a few pints down with nothing on my feet, chatting shit and swearing a little bit more than my mum would approve of. Sure I've got work tomorrow, and I wouldn't be able to stop until I ran out of money, but even that, the finding myself in a pub at last orders on a work night, with that funny drunk way of standing where it looks like you don't have any bones and gravity doesn't quite know what to do with you, flirting with some old bloke at the bar, I even miss that a bit. And although I'm glad I gave all that up, everytime I see my niece and she just says "oh hi", without doing that angry, scared check to see if I'm hungover or worse not really altogether mentally, sometimes I want to be that person again. An acquaintance of mine, when I hadn't long stopped drinking said "I miss drunk maipe, she was fun" and although in a way that doesn't sound like a very supportive thing to say, it's true and it does help to think about it that way.