'Dry January is on hold as I face up to home truths...I'll try again next month'

11 January 2023 , 20:43

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Eva is planning to have a Dry February (Image: Getty Images)

If anyone needed to do Dry January this year it was me.

After being grounded by the pandemic, I decided to make the most of the holiday season visiting family in the US, catching up with old friends in Paris, and rounding things off in my second home Ghana – all in the space of three weeks.

Now I may be a woman of a certain age, but I can still show Gen Z a thing or two about how to have a good time.

It’s fair to say me and my gal pals, smart savvy women, combining their business and work lives with motherhood, went out and partied over the past few weeks and had the most amazing time.

So upon my return home to the UK, it was my intention to fully embrace Dry January, along with 8.8 million Brits who said they would give it a try this year, according to research by Alcohol Change UK, the charity behind the campaign.

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Over half of Brits are likely to give up on Dry January by the second week (Laurence Soulez/Getty Images)

My good intentions didn’t last long.

I stepped on board my flight in Accra in flip-flops and stepped off in the UK in winter boots as I was greeted with ­lashings of rain. A rather ominous sign.

That wasn’t the only thing that awaited me. The train strikes were ongoing making getting home a pain, my luggage didn’t arrive, the ­boiler’s on the blink, and the mountain of post – mainly bills – was enough to start a small bonfire.

Given the heating’s gone it may not be such a bad idea.

My car, which broke down the day before my trip, is still undriveable and on its last legs, and the only thing for it seems to be the scrapheap.

Plus there’s nothing as sobering as cranking open your emails after you’ve been away to drain the life out of you. Missed deadlines to sign kids up to after-school clubs, reminders about pending self-assessment deadline, never-ending email threads.

Everything I put off last year to do this year now needs my urgent attention... argh. So I’ve conceded defeat and will try again next month. Let’s hear it for Dry February. Who’s with me? It’s a shorter month anyway. What could possibly go wrong?

Eva Simpson