(With apologies to Manchester punk poet, John Cooper Clarke)

There are some things in life that should never happen, however old you get. For instance, as we’ve got ‘shirt’ in the title, let me expound forth on one of my pet hates; men who wear shirts, of the proper buttoned up kind, untucked.

I know there are caveats such as if you are wearing a shirt over a t-shirt. I do get that, but I’m talking about a buttoned up shirt with nothing underneath it. I think some middle and later aged men do it because they think it’s trendy. OK, whatever floats your boat.

Others do it, let’s face it, because they consume huge amounts of beer, do no exercise and as a result have large stomachs.

However, you try to market it, it’s an awful look. Never have (untucked), never will.

There are other things that one should never stoop to even when you get to my age, but having gone on a bit too long about shirts over trousers, let’s get to the nub of this blog.

No, I want to talk about neck sizes.

I remember when I started work as a trainee solicitor at the fine establishment of AW Mawer & Co, solicitors of King Street West, Manchester, my shirt neck size was a 14 and a half. I’m sure it was. I then hovered around the sizes 15, and 15 and a half, for a long time. Some time in my late thirties, early forties, I reached size 16 and then I sort of stopped wearing formal shirts on a regular basis. Somewhere though I did hit 16 and a half, but occasionally came back down to 16, depending on how much running I was doing.

Cut to the chase Waring, I hear you yawning. Well, the other week, our youngest son Ben got picked to play for the MCC at Lords. To those who are not cricket buffs, playing for the MCC is considered quite prestigious in itself, but add to that the playing at Lords bit and yes, it’s quite a nice thing to achieve.

Lords is quite ‘establishment’, if you didn’t already know. In fact it is the very embodiment of ‘The Establishment’. Writing about Lords and its ethos, stuffiness, archaic rules, traditions and wonders, would take up several blogs. However, let’s just say, father Waring was invited to join son, for some sort of soiree after the game if son’s team won. Don’t read anything sexist into this – Mother Bear was asked first and declined on the grounds that she’s from Stockport and she was not dressing up for the benefit of any of the Sir Bufton -Tuftons that inhabit (literally) the Lords Pavilion.

I have been in the Pavilion before, a few times. So I knew the drill: shirt, tie and jacket (shirt most certainly tucked in) plus decent trousers and shoes. Not really difficult, but the day before our visit, I thought I’d best check the existing, ‘shirts that go with ties’ section of the wardrobe in which all are 16s/ 16 and a half collar shirts. That’s fine. I still rarely wear a tie even if I put a shirt on.

I tried a 16. Button up to the top and wear a tie. Actually I wasn’t able to fasten the top button. Must do some more running.

OK, on to one of the 16 and a half shirts. In fact onto all the 16 and a half shirts. Top button a tad tight on them all I’d say. More than a tad tight – on all of them. A check in the mirror, confirmed to my horror, what I had thought. I looked like Orville sitting on Rod Hull’s arm – or more to the point, I looked like Orville with Rod Hull’s arm stuck up his jacksy. I could just about move my head vaguely from side to side, whilst mouthing the words, ‘A gottle of geer.’

A feeling of cold terror spread through my body. I rushed downstairs and asked VW if she’d measure my neck. ‘Yeah, it’s 17 and a half.’ ‘Don’t be stupid it can’t be.’ So, she showed me the measuring tape, and there it was.

My life flashed before me. Oh, the shame and ignominy of it! Visions of walking down town and people turning to look at me, laughing, as they say to their mates, their partners or their kids;

‘Ha, ha. Look at that fat necked bastard, there!’

I drove into town contorting my mouth and cheeks with strange gurney-like movements in a vain attempt to strengthen the face and neck muscles. I got some strange looks from people in other cars, but did I care? Not a jot. Life as I had known it was now over.

Was I consigned to playing darts in the pub team? Could I somehow grow my beard down all over my neck, back and front to hide the shameful size it had now become? Would I end up wearing my open necked, sized 17 and a half shirts, outside my trousers? Perhaps a medallion on a chain, like Elvis? More like Jocky Wilson, God rest his soul!

I tried ‘Next’, first, and asked the lady in the Men’s Department if she could erm, measure my neck, please. ‘Yes, it’s 17 and a half.’ I managed to negotiate her down to a size 17. However, as is Next’s wont, they had nothing I liked, apart from one shirt which they didn’t have in 17 (or even 17 and a half, in case you were wondering).

I pottered off to, of all places, Marks and Spencers. It was, after all, Saturday afternoon. My options were limited. I had little choice. I suppose I actually broke another taboo that day, by going to get a shirt from M&S. I’ve always had a fear that John Inman of ‘Are you Being Served’ will jump out at me at any moment from an aisle in the menswear section of Marks’s.

However, a very nice lady agreed to measure my neck. Surely she’ll say: ‘Don’t worry dear it’s only 16 and a half’. Like heck she did. I managed to persuade her that she was wrong to add that extra half inch on, so we again agreed on a compromise at 17 inches. Like she cared, as she was called off to the Haberdashery Department, urgently. As if anything urgent ever happens in M&S. They’ve only just told the staff that Churchill’s died.

Anyway, I found a pleasant mid-blue 17 inch neck shirt, in the slightly posher than normal section. I couldn’t find anything other than a regular fit though. It dawned on me that if you’re 17 inches of neck, they certainly don’t think you are going to be of slim fit around the body.

I gave up.

I bought the shirt and a rather nice tie with lots of little pigs on which I thought would go down well sitting on the benches of the Lords Pavilion. I cheered myself up, by wearing one of my posh stripey summer blazers from Cannes. At least they still fit.

It was a glorious day at Lords in glorious weather. They let both the Queen of Stockport, and I, into the Pavilion. Number two son’s team lost, so we all ended up eating lunch in the Harris Garden. How quintessentially English can you get?

So I guess you’re all supposing with that happy ending I’ve forgotten all about neck sizes. Like hell I have! The gym’s taken some stick over the past two weeks and will be doing so for the foreseeable future.

I’ve had my head down writing since early doors and by six o’clock this evening, the last thing I felt like doing, was sitting down to write my blog. After all, it’s just been another normal day in paradise, or rural Essex as it’s known round here. What is there possibly to write about?

I started to think about a few of the things I’d seen in the news at luncthime and on social media as a I cast the odd glance in the direction of Twitter from time to time .

Sometimes you see a name like Judi Dench trending and start panicking. ‘Oh no, please not – she can’t have’, only to find out that she’s been nominated for an Oscar for her role in the film, Belfast.

A couple of other trends have caught my eye over the past few days. One was ‘Kirstie Allsopp’. I had to take a quick look at why she was trending, yesterday. For those who don’t know Kirstie, she is a TV presenter who fronts property shows with such names as Location, Location, Location and Relocation, Relocation, Relocation (yes, really). Well she’s caused a bit of a furore by suggesting that young people could probably afford to buy a property if they cut out their Netflix subscriptions and Gym memberships. I think there was a bit more to her argument, but that’s the gist of it.

It didn’t go down well amongst the Twitterati or much of the press, for that matter, and in part that was due to Kirstie coming from a background that some might say was a tad privileged (her father’s a Baron). “So what?”, you might say. Well we oiks don’t take kindly to being told how we could do much better for ourselves, by someone who started life on a much higher rung of the ladder than the rest of us.

I had a peep on Twitter this morning and the battle was still raging. Apparently Piers Morgan had started on Kirstie and she called him a bully and …. oh enough, enough.

I then saw another hashtag that caught my eye. #KurtZouma. I knew Zouma as a premier league footballer who plays for West Ham, but the reason his name caught my eye was because, well, he’s a pretty average footballer. So, I guessed he’d been a naughty lad and I thought, I’d check out what the fuss was about.

Oh, my!

It ‘s alleged that Mr Zouma decided to kick his cat across the room and then he slapped it. The Daily Express reported that:

“Zouma was captured dropping and kicking, chasing, slapping and throwing a pair of designer shoes at the terrified feline in his £2million mansion.” There is so much wrong with all of those those words.

Anyway how do we know about Mr Zouma’s indiscretions? Well it seems the whole sickening episode was videoed and posted on Snapchat, supposedly by his brother.

The headlines on Sky Sports News this evening were that Zouma had been picked to play for West Ham tonight. He has apologised profusely and said that both family cats are fine. Apparently, “they are loved and cherished by all the family.” That’s ok, then.

West Ham will deal with the matter internally.

I mused on all this, as I threw a few tennis balls around in the garden for the dogs to chase, in the dark.

Then I remembered something else, I’d seen on the news today. A chap called Jacob Rees Mogg, a throwback to the 1700s has been given a new role in the re-shuffled Cabinet, by Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

Mogg is to be the Minister for Brexit Opportunities.

Just another normal day? Aye, I suppose so. In England. In 2022.

Before I got sober, I don’t think I was ever grateful for anything. Not genuinely grateful. Was I grateful for being brought up in a loving family, by parents who devoted their lives to ensuring my sister and I were fed, clothed, housed and educated? Parents who took us on holiday every year, made our home a real castle and ensured we had Christmas presents every year? All of this despite the fact there was little spare money ever around. Love in abundance though.

Fast forward to being married, having a loving wife and two great little lads, a decent house a thriving business and smart cars. Was I grateful then? I’m sure there were times when I had a moment of clarity and thought:

“How the flip did this happen?”

Then I’d quickly get wrapped up in my own self importance and the woes of running a fair size business.

By then though, I was wrapped up in the disease of more – both materially and mentally. Grateful? Nah, not really. Not at all. Look at the responsibilities I have. If you had my responsibilities, you’d drink,

As the disease progressed what gratitude might still have existed on brief occasions soon disappeared altogether and as things started to unravel, self pity increasingly took over.

The alcoholic binges, where I”d take myself off somewhere for days and end up alone in a hotel room. Poor me. poor me. Pour me another drink. No thought for family. No thought for the plight of others. No thought for anyone but moi.

Then the final denouement. Six months of wilderness. The last throes of the chronic alcoholic. Self pity, self loathing and self isolation became default settings. I drank to forget, to anaesthetise and hopefully to die – the final act of utter selfishness. The absolute opposite of gratitude.

I didn’t die. I got sober. Gratitude was there from day one. Being able to put my head down on a pillow, sober and going to sleep without being half cut. Thank you. I am truly grateful.

It was the head clearing. It was waking up sober. It was my family gradually starting to talk to me again. For lets not forget, they suffered more than I. It was gratitude for them and their incredible powers of forgiveness. The gratitude that is still there for my family taking me fully back into there midst. Always will it be there. Thank you, with all my heart.

Gratitude for the wonderful people that make up AA. They don’t just mend cars, they mend broken souls 🙂 Thank you. To my higher power, for keeping me sober on a daily basis. Thank you.

Gratitude to the people who gave me work and allowed me to rebuild self esteem and a career, one that I wouldn’t change for the world. I am grateful.

I could go on ad finitem.

How strange is it that when we have everything it’s so easy not to have any gratitude at all? Hit rock bottom and try to get well, the gratitude for the tiniest things is there in abundance. I guess the difference is spiritual.

It’s over ten years since I last had a drink. Life has got better and better.

I’d love to say that I’m full of gratitude all the time. I’d be lying. However, when my gratitude bank seems to be running low, something usually seems to miraculously replenish it – like wondering what to write about on my blog.

Oh and thanks Mum and Dad. Thanks a million x

Just before annus horriblis 2020 ended, I made a New Years Resolution for the first time in many a year. I don’t usually stick to them, so I can’t usually be bothered making them anymore. However, after the year it had been, I felt the need to do something positive whilst at the same time attempting to ward off the winter blues, which have proved problematic in the past.

So, I decided to try and run every day of January 2021 and if I succeeded in doing that, I would see if I could go on and run every day for the rest of the year (which funnily enough would turn out globally, and particularly here on Plague Island, to be Annus Horriblis II).

In taking on the challenge of running every day, I was inspired by my fellow Lancastrian, and commonwealth champion marathon runner, the sadly late, Dr Ron Hill, who ran every day for 52 years and 39 days. Ron considered that to qualify as a daily run, he had to cover at least one mile without stopping. Good enough for Ron is good enough for me. So that’s what I did.

I completed 365 consecutive days running in 2021, covering a cumulative total of 1400 miles. For ten months I ran over 100 miles a month but I got plantar fasciitis, a painful foot injury in late October, so had to cut my mileage right down. I got there though and have to say I took great pride in doing so.

Thanks to a very kind client, Shelter will benefit to the tune of a four-figure sum as a result of the challenge having been completed and my effort has been posted on the official Run Streak International website, for posterity.

Taking on the challenge achieved what I’d hoped it would. After a dreary twenty months, it provided something to focus on daily other than trying not to get Covid and trying to forget about this awful government that we’ve somehow ended up with, here in the UK.

Above all the feat gave me a boost, physically and mentally. It really helped my self-esteem. I can still give myself a hard time and the running provided an antidote when it need to.

The run streak is a hard act to follow. If I hadn’t got plantar fasciitis, I’d probably still be doing the streak. Instead, I exercise every day and go to the gym regularly, but it’s not quite the same.

All of this has set me thinking about how I can shake things up a bit this year, without the rigid daily programme of running being an option (at least until this PF has got better).

So, I’ve decided to try and rework life a bit and shed some of the routines that I know I’ve got into and which aren’t amongst the most productive ways of spending time. On the flip side, I’ll look to make some positive additions to what I do on a regular basis.

Making a grand list of what I should and shouldn’t be doing would be a waste of time. I wouldn’t stick to it.

Instead, I plan to shake things up gently and introduce some changes on a piecemeal basis.

The run streak challenge was one of those things that I did because I know running is good for me for all the reasons I’ve stated. However (and here is the addict in me coming out), just because it’s good for me, doesn’t mean I’ll do it. You see, there was always that little chimp on the shoulder telling me why popping out for a run every day was a bad idea: it’s cold out, it’s too wet, it’s too early, it’s too late and so on.

Yet, because last year I’d set myself to go out and run every day, not doing it would have been a big thing and the longer the streak went on, it would have been a very big thing. On the contrary, very quickly slipping my trainers on and heading out, whatever the weather, became what I did, without my having to think about it.

What challenge should I take on now, then? From experience, I know that writing is good for me. I know, I know – I DO write every day. It’s my job, and one I enjoy. Does that not count then?

No, I’m talking about writing for pleasure; about the sheer joy of getting thoughts down on paper, PC, laptop or whatever passes for parchment these days.

I know it’s good for me to write (not perhaps for you, poor soul, to read what I write), but I get a similar buzz from writing a blog to the one I get from running. It’s cathartic too.

Yet still, there is the chimp, or whatever it is, sitting on my shoulder telling me it’s a waste of time, I’m writing to myself and there are better things I could be doing.

I’ve come to the conclusion that when the chimp starts piping up, the opposite of what it tells me to do is what I should be doing.

For now, my challenge is to write something on my blog, every day, just for the hell of it. In doing so, I will start from the premise that about as many people who watched me run every day, will want to read my blog. It would be lovely though if you could prove me (and the chimp) wrong.

PS As there’s more than a passing reference to it, I should acknowledge that a chap called Dr Steve Peters invented this idea of there being a chimp that sits on your shoulder and in its naughty moments gives you less than good advice. Steve’s book is called The Chimp Paradox and if you haven’t read it, I can highly recommend it to you.

You really don’t know how hard this has been. Every time I’ve thought about writing a blog again for the first time since September last year, my brain has frozen over. It sounds ridiculous, but I’ve felt frightened to put pen to paper, or the digital equivalent thereof. I wouldn’t care, but if the blog is read at all, it’s only by two men and a dog (“Hello men, hello dog”).  

Without wanting to go into tons of self-analysis, I can only think it’s something to do with not knowing what’s been going on in my head. I feel as if over the last twenty months or however long it has been, the wiring in my brain has been reconfigured and some of it has been put back into the wrong plug sockets. An alternative reason might be that I’ve become a bit of a lazy so and so.

In reality, it is probably a bit of both.

What the pandemic has forced us into doing, isn’t natural or healthy. Isolation from other human beings generally isn’t good for us ( even though my head is saying, “well what about monks?”. They seem pretty rounded people. Or maybe we just assume they are because after all, they don’t say much, do they?’).

Life for this individual has settled into plenty of work (grateful I’ve got it), running every day, walking the dogs, doing the Guardian crossword with VW at lunchtime, tons of reading (now wading through all the Harry Bosch novels), phone scrolling (a dreadful but addictive habit), watching some cricket on the TV and occasionally one of the lads playing live, and thereafter taking in a few decent Netflix and Amazon dramas.

Add to that my constant moaning about everything this dreadful government is doing; ranting about the state of the nation and why so many people seem to be racist, xenophobic, cold-hearted, hard right-wingers who voted into government some dreadful people who are all incredibly wealthy and elitist and went to the same few, uber elitist schools (odd that) and who are nothing like most of the people who voted for them in any way, shape or form and who don’t give two hoots about them either. A government whose ministers and MPs seem to have a penchant for being economical with the truth and who just want to make the country fit for themselves and their cronies, so they can all make lots of dosh and who when the shit hits the fan, as one expects inevitably it will, are going to run away to their mansions, or second homes in Mustique, Bermuda or Wells next the Sea!

Hmm. If all of this doesn’t sound like the product of a healthy and peaceful mind, it isn’t. In fact, it has all the hallmarks of a head that has had too much time to itself. For this recovering alcoholic, when the mind has too much time to roam of its own device, it will resort to stinking thinking. It’s not that I don’t broadly stand with what I’ve written (or ranted about), but if I was in a healthy headspace, the mind wouldn’t be dwelling on those things. It would be looking for ways to be kind, thoughtful, helpful, and compassionate to others in these difficult times, because if I can’t be those things, why should I expect others to be the same towards me? Be kind, and mean it, and the world is generally kind back.

A healthy head would be telling me there are things I can change and things that I can’t and that I should recognise and focus on what I can change.  I can change the way I perceive the world – after all, there are some really lovely people both nearby and far away (and all places in between) all doing wonderful things. I can work on changing myself – for the better. I can work on thinking of others before myself.

I’m glad that I have broken the habit of not writing blogs. It’s a start. Maybe it’s time to break a few other habits too.

I am a bit like the Queen. I have had two birthdays every year for the past nine years. I have no idea which is her favourite – her official one, or her real one, but I know which is mine. It is the birthday I have today, 29^th September. It is my sobriety birthday and this year I am nine. Nine years sober.

I am just going to let that sink in for a moment, if you don’t mind. Nine years without a drop of alcohol. Not a jot. No cheating or hiding bottles, either.

It still seems unreal, when like now, I sit down and think about it, which I don’t do very often. I’m not saying that I take it for granted. I don’t. That would be a killer. It is why I say a little prayer every day. A prayer to stay sober for the day. Just for the day. Then show gratitude. “I’m truly grateful to be sober, thank you.” I am too.

I don’t take time out like I am doing now though, to think about how amazing it is that this hopeless drunk hasn’t drunk booze for so long and, what’s more, how it is that this hopeless drunk has not had the slightest inclination to drink since 29^th September 2011. I’m not taking the credit. It’s a miracle, which means I’ve had very little to do with it.

During the last six months of my active alcoholism, I struggled to stay sober for nine minutes. I’m not much kidding about that either. Alone in an apartment in a town in the south of France. Lying on the bed at night, unable to sleep, unable to do anything but listen to the endless whine of French mopeds going past the window all night. Seeing the walls moving when I close my eyes. The shakes. The sweating. The terror.

Then in the morning, crack of dawn and out to the supermarché.  A real effort, in itself. Crawling from bed to bathroom. Throwing t-shirt and shorts on. Splash water on the face and clean the teeth, trying not to retch. Doing my fairly limited best, not to look like death warmed up, but obviously failing. “Make sure you take your money, some carrier bags and your keys. Make sure again.” Hands shaking. Legs like jelly. Call the lift. “I hope there’s no-one in it. Please God, don’t let there be anyone in it.”

There’s no-one in it. Phew. Get outside. The supermarché is only around the back of the flats. Less than a five-minute walk. It feels like it’s five miles away. Concentrate. One foot in front of the other. Is anyone looking? No. Ok. Heart going ten to the dozen. In the store. Get a basket and straight round to the booze aisle. Grab some beer and some wine. Easy does it, don’t drop anything. Everyone is looking. (They’re not).

Finally, the till, the worst bit. I’ve tried to calculate the amount to the exact centime, so I can give the cashier the exact amount. All so I don’t have to wait for change. Avoid an awkward conversation in French.

‘Merci, au revoir.’ That’s fine.

Sigh of relief. I’m off again and with a bit of a spring, if you can call it that, as I’m on the home leg, which takes all of three minutes or so. In the foyer of the apartment block, no one is around and the lift is waiting and free. Up to the 2^nd floor. Key shakily in the door and… I’m in. Thank goodness. Thank, goodness.

I take my booty into the lounge. Open a can and ‘glug, glug, glug’. There’s a warm glow as the alcohol hits the back of my throat. Another can and then another. Finally, at last, the state of ‘even keel’ is reached. It’s 9 am.

Eat little, drink, repeat.

Today, I’ve been sober for nine years. This day, my primary purpose in life is not to drink alcohol. Just for today.

This blog has one of those really cheesy, yucky tiles. I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve been thinking about the past. I don’t know whether other people who’ve got to 60 do the same thing, but I find myself playing ‘what if’ sometimes.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy with my lot. This is not a morbid game of dwelling on regrets. No, it’s a lot more fun.

For example, in my mid-late 20s when I was a single lad, living in a ‘studio’ flat (bedsit) in Didsbury (Fallowfield), Manchester, and a jobbing solicitor in Stockport, I contemplated taking a postal course to qualify as a US Attorney at the Californian Bar (ha, ha, not of the drinking type on this occasion). It may have had something to do with watching a series on the telly in the late 80s called, LA Law. Well, it certainly had a lot to do with it.

I think I probably came up with the idea sitting in the cells at Stockport Magistrates Court on a wet Monday morning whilst on Duty Solicitor duties and listening to some toerag going on about how he didn’t want me to apply for bail, because he wouldn’t get it, on account of the fact that he’d coshed an old lady when he broke into her house, so could I just get the Dibble (police) to give him back his baccy and the dosh they’d taken from him, as it wasn’t proceeds of crime.

You can see why LA was appealing!

Well, of course, I didn’t do it, but what if I had? Would I have gone on to become senior partner of McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak? Would I have married Susan Dey? (I hadn’t met VW then, so wasn’t being disloyal !) Would I have lived on the Pacific coastline of Malibu in a 15 bedroomed shack? Would I by now have had a nose job?

The example is, of course, a bit of nonsense. However, it’s a bit ironic that life waits until you’re getting on in years before revealing some of the truths that really would have helped you at the age of 10, 15, 20 and so on. In some ways, it would be good to live life backwards so that by the age of 21, you are one hell of a well adjusted human being. Unless that is, you have just remained stupid all your life, in which case, there’s not much point to this exercise. Think Trump!

You see, when I had this madcap idea of becoming a US Attorney and flying off to LA, my older self could have stepped in and told me to fast forward the video. What it would have shown me was that assuming I had taken the exams and qualified to practice law in the US, and that I got that LA Law job, I’d have got to Manchester Airport, got hopelessly drunk, missed the plane and ended up getting a taxi back to Fallowfield! ‘Don’t do it, Carl.’ Get sober first at least, then have another think!

It would have been great to have my older self around.

So what would I say to my younger self?

Here are 7 basics for starters.

1. Just be yourself. Don’t be afraid to be different. Start off like that and stay like that. As long as you are being true to yourself, and as long as you treat other people the way you’d want to be treated, you can’t really go wrong. Being yourself gives you so much confidence and it means you are more likely to take the path that is right for you, not the one that you feel someone else wants you to take.

2. Bearing in mind that this is me, Carl, telling younger Carl, what he thinks will help him get the most out of his life, probably the most important thing I could say to him is:

‘Don’t drink alcohol, mate. Never’.

There’s nothing killjoy about saying that. It’s just that he (young Carl) and I, were made differently to others. We were born with the ‘ism’ inside us. Mix the ‘ism’ with alcohol and ‘boom’ – lots of crazy, dangerous, painful things will happen and he’ll hurt a lot of people, including himself. He’ll know dark times, the like of which most others would struggle to comprehend. If he’s lucky he may finally come out the other side. Most don’t though. On the other hand, if he heeds the advice, he can achieve anything he sets his mind to.

3. Accept everything – expect nothing. No one gives us a free pass when we are born. Life throws tough things at us all the time. It would be pretty boring if life were a new ‘box of chocolates’ every day. However, that’s what I used to expect – wonderful things to just keep on happening. Surprisingly, that’s not how things always used to turn out. So when they didn’t go according to how I wanted them to, I’d be crushed. Take a drink, most probably, just to anaesthetise the pain of things going wrong or simply not going as I’d planned them to. By just accepting life on life’s terms, everything is so much easier to deal with.

4. Don’t be afraid. I used to be afraid of everything. From a very young age, I’d expect the worst to happen all the time. I had that almost constant sense of foreboding, even if I didn’t know what that meant. It wasn’t usually a fear of anything tangible. It was just that sense that something was just waiting to go wrong. Maybe that was part of my alcoholic thinking, even when I was young. (I believe that I was alcoholic even before I ever drank.) No coincidence, therefore, that since getting into recovery, that sense of irrational non-stop fear has gone, or at least most of the time, it isn’t there anyway. Go on, young Carl. Do it without any fear, because as I’ve since found out, 90 odd per cent of what we fear, never comes to fruition. If it does, you’ll deal with it, because of 5 below.

5. You are stronger than you think. Believe that. Use it to bolster your confidence, because as a young Carl, I know you will be lacking in confidence. Use the knowledge that you are stronger than you think you are, to go out and achieve anything you set your mind to do and deal with anything not so good. That inner strength will get you through anything. It has me. When I didn’t mix it with alcohol.

6. Make sure that you become fluent in at least one other language. At the time of writing, we are living on a small island that’s been taken over by lunatics. Learn another language and go and live and work abroad until the idiots have got bored, gone somewhere else or self combusted.

7. Life is good. If you work at it, it gets even better. Just do the right things and the right things tend to happen. Be kind to others and to yourself. As long as you are doing that you won’t go too far wrong.

Oh and ‘good luck.’ I’ll be looking out for you!