Until now I’ve never sought sponsorship for doing stuff for charity – unlike my colleague David Ainsworth, for example, who’s run two marathons for the Motor Neurone Disease Association.
That changed this month, however, when I signed up for Cancer Research UK’s Dryathlon for January and gave up “the demon drink”, as my mother, with her Methodist background, used to call it. Please feel free to express your admiration for this considerable sacrifice on my Justgiving page. I’ll be giving CRUK the money I save – and no, I’m not saying how many figures that goes into.
The hardest thing was the decision, not the doing. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to stick to the pledge and would end up despising myself and being ridiculed by others when I caved in. And was I going to get withdrawal symptoms – pink elephants dancing on the walls, anxiety attacks?
Fortunately, it’s been altogether easier than I thought it would be. And it’s been interesting to experiment with interesting alternative drinks that remind you of wine: my latest preference is pomegranate and cranberry juice diluted with tonic water – the right colour, and that crucial bitterness. Stick it in a wine glass, as below, and the deception is complete.
The disappointment is that I don’t feel significantly different. Even though I sleep a bit better, I sometimes feel more rather than less tired, especially in the evening without that crucial 8 o’clock sharpener.
So when people ask if I’ll make it permanent, the answer is “I don’t think so” – nothing in the recent days has persuaded me that a healthy, balanced diet does not include a modicum of red wine, preferably from the Rhone valley.
The Dryathlon was a great idea from CRUK: raising money with a health initiative. So far 35,000 people have signed up for it, and I can’t help wondering how many of them work in charities. Is the sector, with its strains and tensions, any more or less bibulous than the rest of the workforce? I’d be interested to hear who in the sector took up the challenge and how they are getting by on the wagon. Dry and delightful? Or just dry and dreary?