"We drink 46 bottles of vodka every year, they scream, but of course we don't; we relax with friends on a Friday night, we share a bottle of wine with a lover, we get unsolicited life lessons over a pint with our dads. I saw in the Millennium sitting in the sand with a bottle of champagne, a few old friends and a few new ones, and a view of the extraordinary fireworks in Sydney harbour. That night, I thought - with due apologies to the banal cheesiness of this sentiment - fuck me, it's great to be alive: here, in this moment, and with these people. Perhaps NHS Scotland could calculate how many seconds closer that magical night brought me to the day of my death, or what six glasses of champagne would be in centilitres of methylated spirits. What a productive use of my tax money that would be."
I've known, and know, alcoholics - true alcoholics - and I pity them, and wish they could find a healthier balance in their lives. Alcohol, which I love but enjoy reasonably responsibly (Monday night notwithstanding), may end up killing them. Hell, it may end up killing me.
But I pity the puritanical tossers more, because they're trying to force their joyless, bloodless worldview on the rest of us, and they simply do not have that right. I'm going to die. How I do it, and when, is just none of their fucking business."
Well, we agree on this kind of freedom then. He even thinks C Brooker is a genius. Is Mr Eugenides lurching ever so closer to the liberal left, whisper it quietly, but I think he might be... Although don't tell him I said so...
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