No life

Some consolation

Toby Young

By the time you read this I'll be holed up in a chalet in Val-d'Isere with a beauti- ful, 25-year-old girl. If you think this dis- qualifies me from writing a column called `No life', you're dead wrong. The girl in question is my ex-girlfriend and she only agreed to come out of a sense of grim moral obligation. When we were still together we decided that a week of skiing together would be a nice, romantic way to spend the millennium — and it would have been if she hadn't dumped me first. By that time, of course, I'd already paid for the whole trip. I persuaded her to come only by telling her I'd go on my own if she didn't. The thought of me spending New Year's Eve watching Eurosport by myself was too much for her to bear so she very kindly agreed to accompany me.

To be perfectly frank, I'm not at all anx- ious about spending time with her. She's fundamentally so good-humoured, I know she'll make the best of it and I'll probably end up having a lovely time. At least I will during the day. It's the evenings I'm wor- ried about. The real problem is I've given up drinking.

I touched bottom, as we say in Alcoholics Anonymous, on Good Friday of this year. I'd flown in to Heathrow that morning on the red eye from New York and then driv- en, non-stop, to Verbier. Actually, my friend Hutton Swinglehurst was driving, but by the time we arrived at midnight I still hadn't had a wink of sleep. I'd been up for 32 hours and the sensible thing to do would have been to go straight to bed. So, naturally, we decided to pop into the Farm Club for a quick nightcap. The Farm Club is the most depraved nightspot in the Alps but it was only five minutes from our hotel so it seemed like the obvious choice.

Six hours later I emerged blinking into the light, having drunk an entire bottle of whisky. By then Hutton was long gone so I set off in what I took to be the direction of the hotel. Two-and-a-half hours later, I was still looking for it. This wouldn't have been such an ordeal if I hadn't left my jacket in the club, not to mention my room key with the name of the hotel on it and my wallet. As it was, by the time I found the hotel and eventually slipped into bed I was in an advanced state of hypothermia.

After what seemed like ten minutes of sleep, I was woken by Hutton who was already in his ski gear.

`Come on, you lazy sod,' he said, 'we'll be late.'

I looked at my watch. It turned out I had had only ten minutes sleep, Then I noticed that something about my little finger didn't seem quite right.

`Huttie,' I asked in a panic, 'what hap- pened to my. signet ring?'

`Don't you remember?' he replied. 'You gave it to that 16-year-old Swedish school- girl you proposed to last night.'

`Oh, my God. What hotel is she in?'

`Sorry, old boy,' he laughed. 'She went back to Sweden first thing this morning.'

I couldn't even remember her name.

The loss of my jacket, wallet and signet ring was enough to shock me into sobriety and I haven't had a drink since. Talk about no life. I wouldn't recommend it. Indeed, I blame the failure of my last relationship on the fact that I'm now teetotal. Being British, the only time I ever expressed any emotion was when I was drunk, so now that I'm on the soda water I'm a complete robot. For a 25-year-old girl looking for a little romance, I'm not exactly the ideal dance partner.

The other problem with not drinking is that it makes going out in • the evening so boring. Alcohol gives a night out a dramat- ic structure, a beginning, a middle and an end. You start out sober, gradually get tipsy then, as the evening progresses, accel- erate towards a climax of complete inebria- tion. At least I did. Now, without alcohol, every evening is a flatline. All around me my friends are involved in a bacchanalian pageant while I'm just sitting there waiting for the curtain to go up. They're in an episode of I Claudius; I'm staring at the Test card.

My ex-girlfriend, being a normal, healthy person, likes a drink now and then and, come New Year's Eve, I'm sure she'll be participating in the final act of the millen- nium while I look on from the gallery. How will I compete with the French ski instruc- tors brandishing bottles of champagne? I haven't got a hope. Have you ever tried dancing when you're sober? Forget about it.

My only consolation is that on 1 January I'll be the only person in Val-d'Isere not suffering from a hangover.