seven random facts I've learned in sobriety

I was tagged by Fathorse.

1. Your bladder shrinks to the size of a pea in sobriety, perversely resulting in even more night time needs to piss.

2. At night my bed no longer flips slowly end over end, causing me to lean out and lay a hand on the carpet to stabilise the room.

3. Pruning a Juniper tree releases the powerful scent of pure gin.

4. It is not necessary to fall into a deep sleep at 7pm each evening.

5. Hospitals could save money by using Carlsberg Special Brew as a general anaesthetic.

6. I have saved £55,000 in 22 years, since quitting booze on 10 Sep 1993.*

7. You don't need to smoke when you stop drinking. So I saved a further £30,000 since 7 June 1997.*

* as at Oct 2015

ancestors

In the mid 1980s I began checking where I had come from. On the male line I made swift progress back through the Victorian era but hit a brick wall at 1800. Since then I have amused myself instead by looking into the ancestry of the dozens of female lines that married into my family. Even though their families are not related to me by blood they are just as much fun to trace! This is such a good hobby for putting down and picking back up a few months or years later. After all, these people are patient, they aren't going anywhere! The photo is a wedding in 1928.

I recently revisited my genealogy files where there are eight hundred and sixty two names, some living but mostly dead, in my database. More than ever, I would love to time travel back two hundred years and talk to some of them. Their lives were so different from our own. No cars, no electricity, no street lights, no microwaves, no refrigerators, no reality TV and no space stations. Yet I am sure they had the same hopes and dreams and fears as us.

I want to pass an electronic family history file to my descendents to hand from generation to generation. Not just names, dates, events and places but my hopes and dreams and fears. Ten years ago I finished writing the first instalment in the story of my life. I think it is time to add another few chapters.