I've had a good weekend. Private Equity Girl and I wandered the grey rainy streets of London yesterday. We've found a small cafe/bistro on the edge of Soho. She seems to like it there; PEG is fluent in French, so she gets to speak to the Gauls in their own lingo. They do a great cow & chips (steak et frites).

Having a g/f who is fluent in French can be most erotic and soothing. It can also be most annoying. I strike back with my own half-remembered sKoOL bOY version of the language.

I bought a copy of Bach's Cello Suites sheet music yesterday. I've started taking my guitar playing much more seriously. I even use a metronome to practice my scales these days. The plan is to work through my favourites, Suite No. 1 (G major) and Suite No. 3 (C major), and adapt them for (electric punk) guitar. This project will stretch my music theory, timing and my hands and my knowledge of the guitar fretboard.

Suite 1 is my favourite, if I had to choose. Here's Yo-Yo Ma playing it. This isn't my favorite YYM, version, btw. If I can nail it as far as 1:22 I'll be pleased with my work this afternoon. If you listen to the recording, as it moves from 2:13 to 2:21, tell me something inside you doesn't soar and want to explode with joy?

Bach, cello Suite 1 (G Major, BWV 1007)

Bach touches the very essence of me. Ahem.

"My drinking assumed more serious proportions, continuing all day and almost every night. The remonstrances of my friends terminated in a row and I became a lone wolf."

Bill's Story, pg. 3, Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition

Sober. Grateful.

We Can Be Heroes...Just For One Day

Today especially is a good day to be grateful for what I have. My immediate needs are met.

It was a theme of my drinking days, that as well as looking forward to the next drink, I was looking towards the horizon for the next lover; the next job; the next pay packet; the next night out; the next guitar: what I had was never enough or good enough. It was exhausting.

What I think I ought to have and what I need(and get) are usually very different things.

Sober. Grateful. Good eye day.

I went to the dentist today (I had a great time...no....seriously...groovetastic) and then I went to see my accupuncturist (she rocks and so does her lurcher). Private Equity Girl bought me dinner this evening; which was lovely.

Sober. Grateful. Good eye day.

I needed to take some time away from blogging, particularly around the time of my 4th AA birthday. Now. Where were we...?

Sober. Grateful.

JUDAS PRIEST - Nostradamus

An unashamed fanboy post **grins**

Click the headline for a taste of the new double album's title track...

...JUDAS PRIEST IS THE FUCKING BEAST GIVING IT ALL THAT METAL IN 2008 AND 2009 ...

....WORLDWIDE VENGEANCE...THE PRIEST IS BACK...SEE YOU ON TOUR...UK & EUROPE...

I AM 4

It is four years ago today that I last had an alcoholic drink. If you had told me four years ago I'd still be sober today, I'd have laughed at you. Back then, four hours without a drink seemed an impossible mountain to climb.

I thought I was a hopeless case. I thought I had fallen too far to turn it around. I knew I couldn't make the necessary changes alone.

Anything good or honest or decent or true that I have in my life today is directly attributable the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. AA gave me the tools to choose to abstain from booze, one day at a time.

I've made mistakes in recovery. There are things I've said or done which I must go back and fix. AA doesn't turn people into saints or Holy Rollers. But, again, AA has provided me with a map for my recovery road, and AA people are there to help point out the road signs on the way. Things which would once have sent me running for the bottle no longer have that power or hold over me.

Sober. Truly, truly grateful.

Each day during the week before my fourth sobriety anniversary, I'm posting passages from AA literature (mostly the Big Book) that have helped me with specific issues, or passages which have particularly struck a chord with me and my own drinking history.

"We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed."

p30, Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition

Whilst it no-longer feels like a cross I have to bear, I don't shout about my alcoholism from the rooftops. I have become more balanced in what I disclose and to whom and when. I have no more a problem admitting to someone, when appropriate, that I am an alcoholic, than I do telling someone I have an eye disease.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.

Sober. Grateful.