Another glorious weekend, another round of friends cavorting in the back yard. It was Saturday lunch time when they arrived and we got stuck into the booze fairly quickly and steadily from then on. Two had just returned from a month in Italy, their first real OS trip, and related their experiences wholeheartedly. Their time was so different from my back pack journey that comparisons were hard but our love for Rome, Venice and Florence was enough to transport me back. Of course they came with an enourmous bunch of slides which we dutifully sat through in a semi darkened lounge room but, by then, my mind was wandering, closing down and getting kinda slurry : Booze really is a great time waster and, I've got to admit, I just can't handle it very well anymore. I remember with fondness the famous BrandScan lunch at the Nth Sydney Italian where Andrew T. bleerily harangued the staff with choice words like "third rate food and third rate service", etc, etc, etc. He was on a roll that afternoon, as were we all. For some reason I had been mixing my drinks (really and truely the worst thing to do) and my sense of balance was shot, to say the least. After the restaurant, I decided to cross the street against the lights and dragged some helpless woman with me (whose name I can't for the life of me remember - funny that). Here legs were as unsteady as mine and I managed to get us across without being run over but, unfortunately, I had to drag her over the crossing which left her stockings in a shredded mess. So we madly traipsed into the Chemist to buy her new ones, where we were fascinated by a huge bowl of 'hair scrunchies'. These things didn't hold up to the scrutiny of half blind idiots like us. As we left, about a million multi coloured bit of elastic and material were bouncing round the chemist's floor. After many more drinks I made my way home to bed and, amazingly, I woke up the next morning feeling quite chirpy : no hangover, etc. Compare this to yesterday where I was a delicate mess that even the beautiful spring weather couldn't fix and I'd only had a bottle and a half of wine. Yes, that great old time waster, alcohol, just doesn't hack it for me anymore and maybe, just maybe, I'll be a better, more well adjusted person because of this. On the other hand, I could become even more boring than I already am...