KEY POINTS:
The brandy essence bottle had remained untouched in my cupboard since the mad Christmas cake-making week in December last year.
It ended in eight cakes but I couldn't give away two of them and they remain somewhere in the back of the cupboard.
I was examining the brandy
essence bottle because I hadn't had a drink for three days.
I was wondering if a combination of a teaspoon of brandy essence and a glass of diet ginger ale would trick my mind into thinking I was having a drink. I was a desperate woman.
It all started when I was spending far too long searching on the internet for the grapefruit diet.
My neighbour lets me pick at my will from his tree, which is laden with the things.
I love grapefruit and I had some dim memory from the 1970s of a diet which involved eating lots of it. This could get me off the weight loss plateau I've been on for two years.
I stumbled across a very bad review on the merits of consuming nothing but grapefruit and chardonnay and was drawn to a button on the site that said "Diets We Recommend".
Which is where I found the one where you can still drink wine.
"We're going on the Sonoma diet tomorrow," I told my husband.
"It's basically Mediterranean, olive oil, capsicum, broccoli, ancient grains and wine," I continued.
"Wine?" he asked, suspiciously.
"Yeah, like I said, it's Mediterranean and wine is very good for you, being full of anti-oxidants and very ancient."
I presented him with the book and left him to it.
Half an hour later he returned. "Okay, I'm up for it, but you do know you can't drink for the first 10 days?"
"Oh really?" I said, furious as usual that his reading skills were more in-depth than my skimming.
"Are you going to be all right with that?" he asked cautiously.
"Why wouldn't I be?" I snapped. "I have loads of alcohol-free days."
Alcohol-free days are the sunscreen to the melanoma of drinking.
As long as you have some, you think you'll never come down with the disease, despite constant exposure to your numerous friends who could possibly be contagious.
My friends and I often ring each other after an alcohol-free day to gloat at our remarkable strength. But to be fair, they usually follow a day so rich with liquor only aliens could continue drinking.
"One alcohol-free day every so often is a bit different from 10 days in a row," he pointed out, backing off a few paces and getting ready to run.
"Whatever. Just watch me."
By day three it would be fair to say I was not a happy woman.
I had finished work and was ready for wine o'clock and nothing was going my way.
I was so consumed with wishing my glass was literally half full that my metaphorical glass was empty.
Meanwhile, my co-dieter, flushed with the joy of being on the first diet in his life, thanks to a metabolism which, powered by nicotine, had kept him lean and mean despite treating pies, and fish and chips as three of the five main food groups
"I feel so much more energetic," he enthused.
"A little tip, if you're hungry, drink lots and lots of water I've had three litres today already."
I glared at him, the veteran dieter that I was.
"Never mind, only seven days to go," he chortled, as he whisked up a toasted quinoa pilaf.
By day four I was ready to gloat.
"I'm sorry, what did you just say?" came my friend's shocked response.
"I thought you said you hadn't had a drink for four days."
I sipped on my brandy essence and dry.
"That's right," I said.
"By the the way, do you know if they make gin essence?"
