Now this I love......

Oh my goodness, these pictures make me feel quite faint. This IS the most beautiful wedding ever. Some of the best photos I have seen. The cutest couple and the cutest ideas. I want to get married again (to the same man) and do it like this....wowzas

Sometimes my style is quiet, understated & calm but sometimes life just needs to be a bit more fabulous...these are so beautiful!

The British Medical Association published a report on the dangers of drink this week, but assured us the organisation is not anti-alcohol. Well, it bloody well should be.

Alcohol is directly linked to more than 60 medical conditions and costs the NHS millions of pounds every year. The casualty departments are full of drunks. They also contain the sober victims of alcohol-induced violence, drink-driving and various other horrors of secondary drinking. I gave up alcohol on September 24, 1986, but its still quite possible I will end up in hospital or the morgue because of someone elses drinking.

My dad, an enthusiastic patron of public houses, often said: If you knocked down all the pubs, youd have to build a lot of lunatic asylums. A friend recently said to me that if there was a genuine attempt to stop people drinking, thered be rioting in the streets. Clearly, this is a dependency culture. Alcohol is killing people in a variety of ways but a large part of the population cant face life without it, so the carnage is allowed to continue.

All our decisions can be roughly broken down into things we do because of love and things we do because of fear. The BMAs reluctance to condemn drink as firmly as it condemns tobacco is not based on the love of those in its care but rather the fear of the outrage if people were told they should face life head-on, without the soothing softener of alcohol.

People need booze to make themselves and their acquaintances seem more exciting. How many parties or nights in the pub have been rescued by booze slowly oiling the social machine? There are pills that do the same job. Would it be OK to use them in the same way? If you turned up at a friends dinner party and she casually handed out sedatives, wouldnt you feel a bit weak and pathetic?

Im starting to sound like an old-fashioned Temperance League member, but it irks me that alcohol is seen as a social necessity, an ice-breaker. You get drunk with a new workmate or neighbour in order to bond with them. It loosens people up and makes them more gregarious. Well, whats going on here? Are we saying we need a mind-altering drug to enable us to reach out to another human being or give us the courage to speak in a group? Shouldnt we deal with that?

Were back to love and fear again. Why do you drink? Is it because you love the people youre with or because youre slightly afraid of them? Is it because youre unhappy with who you are and so feel the need to change yourself even if its just a little bit with the aid of alcohol?

I often sat with friends, the lunchtime after the night before, discussing our drunken exploits. The thing Steve said to the bloke at the chip shop, the way Darren fell off the bus. None of us had the guts to say: But it wasnt really us, was it? It was us made more colourful by a drug. These things we did our displays of courage and eccentricity only happened because they were induced by chemicals. We sit here shining our puny badges of rebellion and celebrating our maverick lifestyle, but deep down we know its all a sham an alcohol-induced charade.

Who are we when unaided by intoxicants? What stories concerning the real, unaltered us are worth telling? If there is none then we must stop taking the easy option the short-term fix and strive to make the real, unaltered us worthy of the tale.

Of course, I never said that or anything like it because I was keen to continue the charade; to tell the stories and enjoy my part in them.

I was a heavy drinker. I have been known to wake up in a pool of my own urine in a place I didnt know. So-called social drinkers will read this and say, His case is different; he had a problem, but anyone who is reluctant to face social gatherings without the aid of alcohol should be asking themselves why.

I got drunk, ultimately, I suppose, because I was afraid of being sober. The social drinker is afraid of being sober and of being drunk. He seeks a cosy middle ground where social situations are made that little bit more manageable, that little bit easier to navigate. It is double self-deception; it is neither a real world nor one that is free from dependency.

The Government may consider public health less important than alienating voters and rich brewery owners or losing the revenue on alcoholic drinks, but the BMA should forget about cosmetic changes, such as banning advertising and happy hours, drop the niceties, come down at least as hard as it did on tobacco and say what needs to be said: alcohol is a dangerous drug dressed up as a warm and reassuring companion. It temporarily kills who you really are and replaces it, in varying degrees, with a chemically created persona thats when its not literally killing you, making you ill or terrifying those around you who are not similarly benumbed.

We cant trust the people to decide for themselves because their dependency often not readily apparent and so easily denied obviously clouds their judgment. We need the BMA to provide impetus for a great national sobering-up.

Interesting article as I have just stopped drinking alcohol. There is a lot of truth in this article especially about 'chemically created personas'. I have realised just how changed by alcohol people can be...so far I have actually had no problems at all with the social side of things and that confident, relaxed feeling that I used to get from alcohol isn't actually necessary to me I have found. Luckily for me I am a sociable person and find the atmosphere of being amongst friends or loved ones enough to carry my high spirits along. It wouldn't be the same for everyone though, so it does seem that I have been fortunate.

The young think they invented youth, but our parents were cool too.

Dates: Third Sunday of every month

Time: 10am – 2pm

Location: Palmerston Road, Southsea

Upcoming Market Dates at Southsea:

Sunday 18th October

Sunday 15th November

Sunday 20th December

Love love love a farmers' market.

I want to work there....making tea...anything....

This makes perfect sense to me....I have been banging on about this for years now.

Balloon boy needs one of these...one day someone will buy him a beer on the back of his story.