Gin

This almost never made it to publication. I am slowly stacking up 'draft' blogs that never quite get finished. I'm a bit distracted at the moment by a combination of awesomely good things and heart-breakingly bad things. Well, thing. Alas, at this stage I do not seem to be someone who draws creative inspiration from pain.

Or gin. Which is a shame, since I've drunk plenty of it.

Normally I reserve gin for flying - for reasons now lost in the gin-soaked mists of ginny time, I have developed a tradition of drinking G&T when the drinks trolley rumbles past on an Emirates flight somewhere points east. It probably makes me feel like some sort of explorer. I'm going to start a campaign for compulsory pith helmets on long haul flights. We can all imagine we're sipping our anti-malarial tonic water while keeping our eyes peeled for cloud formations that only we will ever see (unless Mr Johnson in 46B happens to be looking the same way).

At the moment gin is taking its place in a pantheon of liquid medicines, jostling alongside wine, whisky and quite a lot of beer, like some sort of cocktail of... erm, well just like a cocktail. A self-assembly cocktail. IKEA cocktail. Flat-pack alcohol - I quite like to the idea of putting my drink together with dowel rods.

You know, I don't think I've ever written the word 'dowel' before. Astonishing. Thank God for pointless blogging - I might never have written it! Can you imagine the tragedy?

You're probably getting the general idea of why I'm not finishing things at the moment. I'm trying to look at heartbreak in the following way:

Doctor: I'm afraid I know what's wrong with you. The symptoms generally include angina like attacks that affect breathing and cause the sensation of pressure on the heart. There is also sickness and nausea, which may affect appetite and will certainly be uncomfortable. You should be over the panic attacks stage, but reoccurance does happen so be careful. Worst of all though is that, like a urinary infection, this condition does have a psychological effect, which is perversely both symptom and cause. You will find yourself thinking and behaving irrationally. While it is important to remember that this is unavoidable and not your fault, neither must you give in to it, since this will cause an extension of your other symptoms. The bad news is, there's no cure. The good news is it's seldom fatal, and if you follow prescribed advice you'll be right as rain in a few months. Take liberal amounts of gin every night, and if symptoms persist, fucking drink more.