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I usually have something sarcastic to say. But not tonight. Tonight I just want to say how wonderful summer bbqs are. They are the epitomy of peace. Meat burning on the searing plate. Beer going warm in your hand.

Tonight we had a summer bbq. It’s only spring, but it was a summer evening, the three of us sat and ate our fatty, gristly meat together, grinning through charcoal crusted teeth, squinting into the setting sun.

It was great. It was just how I imagined parenthood would be. Before I actually had a kid and then realised I would never eat a hot and/or complete meal again without a serious case of indigestion and a nervous twitch in one or both my eyes.

Anyway. It was lovely.

A moment to be treasured.

I’m just grateful I’d only had one beer so I can actually remember it…

There haven’t been many posts lately. Sorry. It’s Facebook’s fault. I think I’m developing a problem… there’s probably a medical term for it already…

The thing with facebook is that it’s all fine and dandy to send a keg to 12 of your top friends or give a cask of wine to a special classy laydee, but ultimately it’s not actually a keg you’re sending them is it? It’s a picture of one. It’s not real. Facebook is a fantasy world where admittedly it’s fun and fluffy and everyone is your friend, but people are rated as being heavyweight drinkers because their friends have sent them 50 million fake drinks. That’s just wrong. You’re only a heavyweight drinker if you can drink an entire slab and still remember to urinate in the toilet and not in your pants. And that’s a real slab and a real piss I’m talking about here!

Don’t get me wrong - I love facebook and I love to send drinks to people but let’s keep it real guys. Take a night off facebook. Actually buy a friend a drink. A real drink. At a real pub…

you can take photos of it and post it on your facebook page…

I have a sore throat like I haven’t had since I was nine.

When I still had tonsils. That were infected for roughly 8 months of the year.

There are things on the back of my throat that can only be described as “pustules” … and they look angry. Oh so angry.

So I’ve been duly miserable. Trying to take panodol every 4 hours not every 2 and living on throat lozenges. I haven’t been much fun. And the night before last - I couldn’t even face a beer.

Oh I know. The shame!!! But I just didn’t want to waste the beer on myself… if that makes sense. I felt a bit better last night so i thought I’d have a bevvy and see how I went… and you know what I found out?

I wasn’t that sick. I was a little bit sick and a big bit sober. When I woke up in the morning after tee-totalling I realised that:

a. mornings are far more shit than I could ever have imagined

and

b. this is how most people wake up every morning:

alert… hydrated… cheery…

OH MY GOD MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So here concludes this evening’s post. When you’re feeling poorly - too poorly to drink - just stop and think, please, that it’s not so much getting you drunk, but more preventing you from being sober.

And if you’re feeling crap, the last thing you want to do is feel crap and feel crap sober…

Last night I tried Bitburger for the first time. It was a lovely dry little drop. Quite hoppy and flavoursome. The reason I tried it was because our local bottleshop is having a competition to win a BeerMate but you have to buy Bitburger or Heineken to enter.

Aha! What’s a BeerMate I hear you ask? I know you’re probably thinking that you already have several BeerMates chilling nicely in the back of your fridge but this BeerMate is different…

We’ve always fantasised about having our beer on tap and enjoying a freshly poured 10 oz each evening. The thought of it makes me tingle. But the logistics are frightening. I can see why pubs are still operational because it would take an act of military precision to install a beer tap in the standard kitchen and keeping the keg cold creates a problem that would fry the brain of a quantum physicist.

Well, ok it IS possible but so much trouble that no respectable beer drinker could be bothered.

So the Sunbeam BeerMate is the answer to the age old problem of how to get a fresh icy cold beer poured straight from the keg in you own kitchen without having to turn your house into a pub and employ bar staff. It’s ingenious. And, in our society of the gadget-guzzling-consumer I guess it was only a matter of time before someone invented it and someone decided they needed to buy it.

Basically it’s a household appliance designed to hold a 5 lt keg and to chill - that’s right CHILL!!! - the beer at the same time. It’s about the size of a domestic coffee machine from what I gather and seems to be infinitely more useful! (Says she who nearly went spare without her coffee machine when it spent a week in the shop being fixed - some might say due to a problem caused by overuse…)

My addiction to all things stimulant aside… I think I would like to give this BeerMate thing a try. But at $600 a pop I won’t be buying one on a whim - think I might have to win one. Which means a lot more Bitburger!

Oh well - there are worse things a person might die of… like lack of caffeine…or a perfectly installed tap and no way of refrigerating the keg…

Have you ever reached a point in your life where you’ve just stopped what you’re doing and asked “well, how did I get here?” (Some one should so write a song about that….)

You just wonder at what point did your life degenerate into such a filthy quagmire that drinkng before the sun is even up becomes not only a viable option but a damned attractive one?

I should set the scene before you conclude that I’ve finally slipped cheerily into the arms of alcoholism…

Yes it is 8:32 am. And yes I am indeed drinking beer. I would like to say in my defence that I don’t have any choice. You see, the day started for me with dear Felix barking his lungs up across the hall and then deciding that if he was awake - everyone should be and thusly shouting at the top of the lungs that I had previously believed had been coughed up. This all happened at 5:18am.

THAT IS STILL NIGHT PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I tried to go back to sleep. I really did. But it’s so hard when an 18 month old child has the uncanny ability to make noises that would put large gardening machinery to shame. And I’m talking stump-munchers here. So finally because I guess he felt sorry for me (and possibly because it didn’t look like I was going to ever get up) my husband rose to attend to the noise disturbance and left me in bed. I still couldn’t go back to sleep. I dozed. In between the thundering of toddler feet on the wooden boards in the kitchen and the sound of plastic-ware being reefed out of the cupboard and thrown at any object containing the most capacity for echo and reverberation.

So I got up. reluctantly of course. And now that I’m up, my husband has decided that he needs a bit more sleep so has returned to bed, (aw diddums!), and my son has eyes that look like piss-holes in the snow and is clearly exhausted so I’ve packed him back off to bed too… leaving me alone and having had only one coffee.

And as everyone is sleeping I can’t make another one because the grinding of the beans would wake people in the next suburb let alone people the next room.

It’s too early for anyone to be on Facebook.

There’s no way I’m cleaning at this hour.

So, I feel I have been left with only one choice: to drink a beer alone and whilst still in my pyjamas.

Bintang. An Indonesian Pilsener. Nice. Quite dry. Curiously refreshing at this hour.

In fact if any of you are considering alcoholism seriously, then I would definitely recommend this beer as a nice starter for you. Goes down quiet easily first thing in the morning.

There’s nothing really remarkable about this beer other than the time at which it is being consumed. But it’s good and I would have it again.

Possibly even at this hour.. if fact I’m enjoying it so much I’m considering making this part of my routine - screw the second coffee! I’ll just have a pilsener thanks!

And welcome to the hazy, neurotic world of drinking problems Jems…