I have just signed up for the March Swimathon and will be swimming 5000 meters again and expect to finish in just under two hours. 5000 metres is 200 lengths of a standard swimming pool so quite a challenge. Luckily since I quit alcohol I have been swimming on average 20 times each month to keep fit so I am more than confident.
This year however I am also doing the team event the day before. In my team are my daughter Alexandra, my son-in-law Andy and my granddaughter Isabella. She will only be swimming 33.3 metres but at three years old she will really deserve her medal!

I was on the station platform this morning and I heard someone tell the people they were with that he is quitting smoking. As you can imagine his colleagues were all very supportive, offering advice and assistance and generally wishing him well.
It made me think how different it is when you announce you are quitting alcohol. 'What?' people say. 'Why do you want to do that?' and similar comments.
Drinking is so much part of so many people's lives it is no wonder it is hard to find genuine support when you first start to quit.
It gets easier of course once you are past the first few weeks because them you have the moral high ground and if challenged can truly state the benefits you are experiencing.
It is a good thing there are groups like Club Soda to provide help and advice for those initial weeks. Do make use of all the help that is available and I am always happy to help where I can. Best of luck.

Ages ago I promised to write another book and now I have started that process.
In the interim I have been busy working full time in the City and helping a young software company thrive. This has involved a massive amount of work and mental input but even at 62 I have the energy and brainpower to do this. Something I should have had available to me all those years ago when I wasted my time drinking instead.
One area of focus in my new book will be looking back at lost opportunities. I said in I Don't Drink that I would never look back but perhaps with age I have been doing just that. As you near retirement age and realise there is only a limited working number of years left you tend to wonder what could have been. I know I screwed up so many fantastic opportunities and all of them were buggered because of my fixation with alcohol.
Watch this space for more updates as I write - Seven years and still laughing - am ex-drinker's tale