rediscovering a horrible side effect of tight-wad living… a drastically lowered alcohol tolerance. we’ve been such cheapskates, for so long, that our drinking skills have been temporarily (god, I hop* not permanently??!) impaired. why were we such skinflints that we couldn’t even buy the odd pint? well, it’s not that a beer every once in a while is so expensive. it’s that you can’t go to the pub and buy just one beer.

[sidenote for my american readers: there's a hard and fast rule about pub etiquette in the u.k., which is that you don't ever just byob (buy your own beer) at the pub, but rather buy a round for everyone in your group. so - if you're out with 6 people, your round consists of paying for 6 drinks. now, it's not so bad if you plan to drink another 5 beers (as everyone takes "getting a round" in turn) to get your money's worth. but if you don't fancy poisoning your liver every time you go out, or emptying your wallet when all you want is your *one* beer, you end up either alienating friends and neighbours by flauting the "rounds rules", *or* you just stay home a lot more. there are, in fact various ways to subvert the "rounds rules", but really it's considered poor form of manners to do it more than very occasionally. read more about the "rounds" phenomenon here. the "rounds rule" is really not as onerous as it sounds for the most part, and it's just something you become acclimated to as part of the way of life (and in fact, is often a nice little cheery communal sort of practice), but it doesn't really lend itself to budget living, no matter how you look at it. it *does* however, help build up your alcohol tolerance rather dramatically.]

So, getting back to the story: I had a little pre-departure leaving-do drinks-thing with a couple of my female colleagues after work on Friday. We split two bottles plus a bit (another frequent practice when more than one person in a group is drinking wine, which often lends itself to overconsumption – rather than 2 people having two individual glasses of wine, they’ll split a bottle… which often turns into more than one bottle… you get the idea), so altogether, I had three large glasses of white wine over the course of a few hours.

then came home so that j and i could take kerryn out for celebratory drinks for his recent engagement. (the poor soul has had a “dry” few weeks [including his birthday!] due to extended antibiotic usage for his impacted wisdom teeth.) so kerryn, j and i went to our local up the street, which serves a delightful strawberry lambic (and if you’ve never had a belgian fruit lambic beer on a hot summer night, you’ve not lived – not that list night was hot, or summer, but after three glasses of wine, who needs any excuses for fruit beer?) and I had two pints of that.

so to recap: 3 glasses of white wine, two pints of fruit beer, between 6 pm and 1 am.

and I am suffering for it now. which means i didn’t make it to the post office to mail the fruit pies.

see, I also belong to this american expats forum – which is exactly what it sounds like. a bunch of americans alternately whinging about and glorifying the expat existence in the united kingdom. and one of the members back in the states generously sent a big box of hostess fruit pies for several of the regular posters, which i, gripped by some strangely benevolent impulse, agreed to re-distribute to the others on this side of the pond. a hostess fruit pie delivery chain was set up. now the pies took ages to arrive, and i only finally got them two weekends ago. and of course I was meant to send them last weekend, but we were in the midst of getting rid of all our furniture and fruit pie postage was waaayyyy down at the bottom of the “to do” list. then today, despite all my good intentions, i was far too hung over to make it to the post office, due to my newly discovered “liquor lightweight” fighting class, a direct result of being skint for the past 10 months.

so if you’re an A.e. member wondering where on earth your fruit pies are… i heartily apologise for not being able to handle my fruit lambic. take some comfort in the fact that I’m being soundly punished for not holding up my end of the fruit pie chain.

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lambic, beer, hostess fruit pies