I apologise to my children

There are many things I could apologise to my children for; singing out of tune on purpose in public, leaving the house without looking in the mirror, being totally neurotic about sleepovers, for example, but I never thought I'd be apologising for not drinking alcohol.

I have, however, realised that my avoiding of alcohol because it makes me fall asleep and miss all the fun has robbed them of an interesting autobiography. Autobiographies usually frustrate me because I find them a little one sided; I always want to know what everyone else thinks but I have just finished Romany and Tom by Ben Watt (of Everything But the Girl fame), which was loaned to me by a friend. This autobiographical story about his ageing parents describes life with a fading Jazz musician.  He says that the photos of his Dad that make him the happiest are the ones taken during periods when he isn't drinking.  The funny thing is that he doesn't write about them.

I can understand why.  Alcohol just makes stories funnier.  When I think of the things from my childhood that people might want to read about they all involve alcohol.

 I could tell stories about my Dad's friend and trumpet teacher, a former Jazz musician with a suitably jazzy name, who carried a briefcase full of manuscript paper, sheet music and a couple of bottles of cider.  I remember sitting in pub gardens and listening to him tell stories about his former life.  I always particularly liked the one about his former colleague who had 5 daughters and so commissioned an artist to inscribe the underside of the toilet seat with the words, "Daddy's home." in gold letters.

Christmas was made by alcohol.  From my mum killing the fish with sherry, "One for you,  one for me," before retiring to bed before dinner was served, to my grandad proving he wasn't drunk by walking down the white lines in the middle of the road, falling off the kerb and breaking his arm, to my Uncle slurring how he had shot the bird we were eating to compete with my Dad bragging about the vegetables he had grown to my neighbour, who always cheated at Monopoly, getting belligerently upset because everyone was 'drunk and cheating'.

I could tell of our holiday to France, when we stayed in a Gite in Brittany and how friendly the farmer owner had been after my Dad had tried to explain that my sister's nosebleed had ruined the bed in his very poor french.  I could then go on to describe the evening when they invited us to dinner and my Dad and the Farmer got seriously drunk on Calvados.

My poor children have been denied these stories.  The closest they have is when the Long Suffering Husband  got a little squiffy when the neighbours invited us to dinner over 10 years ago and he chased their cat around the living room trying to give it a cuddle.  I've just realised that we've never been invited back.

I don't think that one story would be enough for an autobiography.  The rest is all quite dull for books. "My parents got up and ate and watched the TV.  My mum read books, complained about her allotment and went swimming and my Dad played golf and swore at the football on the telly."  It's not exactly gripping. So, I apologise Kids, you'll just have to have alcohol fuelled adventures of your own to write about.

This is what booze does to your mother -even less fun!