Seven days: No non-alcoholic beer in Lerwick!

Coke Zero (2)
Britvic J2O (1)
Coffee (Equal Exchange fair trade dark roast beans)(4)
Nambarrie tea (2)
Two-finger Kit-Kats (2)
Mini Mars Bar (1)

Cheese...now there's an idea.

Searched for non-alcoholic beer (both Furstenberg and Becks do good ones) but nothing in Lerwick. Good grief, that J2O stuff is horrible. Slimy fruit juice. Apparently you can get it in alcopop form.

That's twice I've walked out of the Co-op and once from Tesco in the last four weeks, unable to thole waiting at checkouts. This time, trying to buy a Guardian at Tesco ( I know, I know) a huge queue developed behind a man to whom BOTH staff devoted what seemed like hours. A man who was trying to claim money from last week's lottery ticket. Except it wasn't last week's at all, it was tonight's...

Day six: it's Friday; have a cup of tea

How does alcohol function in someone's life? Well, if life is a video, alcohol is:

(1) The fast forward button, zipping you through the boring bits. Unfortunately, it leaves you bedraggled and unable to cope quite as well with the interesting stuff as you otherwise might have. Not to mention fatter and more out of breath.

(2) The on-off switch. Turning off so that, when you switch back on again, everything seems clearer and more comprehensible. Or, on the other hand, not.

(3) The eject control. Alcohol, as anyone who's tried to write something will know, can, in suitable quantities, allow your mind to flip right over into another story, another way of looking at things. Swop Mamma Mia for Citizen Kane. Or vice versa.

(4) Focus. It can make the movie look sharper, clearer, better. Or fuzzier.

"Between briliance and oblivion/that's the condition that I'm living in."

Or, on the other hand, there's tea. Anyway, that's day six, which has included my first unhungover morning flight back to Shetland in recent history. Less scary. Fewer palpitations. Gone are the British Airways Budgie days when they would serve brandy with your morning coffee...

Note to self: do not substitute buying guitars on eBay for alcohol...

Teetotal day four: the woman who poured my Amrut whisky down the toilet

I have never been searched more thoroughly. Well, my hand luggage, anyway. Sumburgh security is legendary for its detailed rummaging through bags, and I thought I'd removed everything confiscatable. But I'd missed the pewter whisky flask (50th birthday present from old pal Stewart)full of Amrut Indian single malt (unfiltered and world-class, really).

"You can only carry this on board if it's empty," said the woman in charge. I looked at her. She looked at me. I thought, 'this is only day four, and if I don't drink this...'

"Would you mind," I said, "getting rid of it for me?" She took the flask into the toilet and returned it, empty. I feel confident she didn't drink it.

Glumly, I drank mineral water on the flight, which was bumpy as hell. But I had sour cream pretzels.

Day three: Dreams of Guinness and dust

No, really. Proper, hallucinogenic dreams last night involving a bar where the gantry was all clear, empty glasses and bottles, and Guinness, extra cold, on draught. I could taste it.

That and a road coated in white, choking dust.

Not that I'm a great fan of Guinness. I did have a transcendent experience in Cork in 1978, where I first tasted Murphy's Stout. Much nicer.

Thing is, I woke up without any desire for an alcoholic drink. I've only ever been tempted in that direction on two, mega-hungover occasions, one involving a funeral. No, what I wanted was tea and some of my fresh-baked bread. Which, I must admit, did taste a bit yeasty...

Anyway, I've decided that for the next 27 days I will not stint on grub, eating what I like, without guilt. So today at 11.45 am I was in the Skipidock scoffing macaroni cheese and chips with real enjoyment. Yum.

Moderation Management and the First 30...day two

Here's a thing: Moderation Management is an organisation set up to help folk who want to cut down (but not necessarily give up) on their drinking of alcohol. It's the un-Alcoholics Anonymous. Have a read at their estimable website for more.

MM have one rule: you can't drink moderately, they say, unless you can do a straight 30 days without touching a drop. I've done this once previously - annotated in the late lamented 'Soda Water and Lime' blog - and, in the run-up to the radio series I'll be doing soon about alcohol and its attendant health and social issues (working title: How Not to Drink)I'm having a go at it again.

So far, this is day two. Day one doesn't really count, as, after a splendid night out at friends, I was in a Martin-Amis-after-Interviewing-Antony-Burgess state of hungoverness yesterday.

So far, so easy. I know it won't begin to bite until Friday, that-end-of-the-week-reward moment. The remnants of a toxic headache remain to taunt me with the words: gin, red, white, Balvenie, Grouse. Enough, already.

I'll be using this blog as diary and reminder to keep on the straight and narrow, with some asides into hopefully interesting drink-related territory. If I become a sobriety bore, do tell.

(One of) the other Tom Morton(s) breaks cover

I've been aware for some time of the existence of several other Tom Mortons working in what might generalise as 'the media.' This one broke cover the other night in Channel Four News. He appears to be some kind of advertising guru.

There's another TM in Australia, a broadcaster and writer, oddly enough, and I once appeared at book reading in a school to find a display of one of his books artfully arranged behind me. There's a dead Tom Morton, acclaimed painter; and there's Tom Morton the curator of the Cubitt Gallery in London, also a writer.

It may have been one of these TMs or a different one entirely who wrote an article recently for MicroMart about gaming, thus occasioning my father to get in touch, anxiously wondering how I'd acquired all this abstruse knowledge about Grand Theft Auto and the like.

It wisnae me.

Thing is, though, should I change my name to avoid confusion? Is it up to me?
Who am I, anyway? Thomas MacCalman Morton is my full name. How about T MacCalman Morton, a soubriquet I have used on occasion when wishing to appear pretentious. Or Tom MacCalman Morton. Or, to return to the name I was universally known by until university, Tommy Morton?

Up helly Aa and the process of recovery

I presume that vikings didn't drink whisky, or indeed claret. Or, for that matter, Coca Cola and Tennents Lager (from separate tins; mixing the two is not advised).

My alcohol consumption on the night of the Northmavine fire festival involved wine with dinner, more wine at the Hilswick Hall (one of those tiny aeroplane bottles), a tin of lager and a tin of coke. I always like to mix my drinks on such occasions. But it was the two whiskies that both lifted things towards the end of the night (a wee livener, as they say) and left me in a state of post-festivity fuzziness next day.

I have no idea what the whisky was. It was probably Bells. Certainly, my head was ringing like one yesterday. The red wine was...red. Sort of winey.

In other words, a good time was had. You'll forgive me if my powers of description and analysis seem to have taken as much of a battering as my liver. I don't think vikings were very big on nosing their drinks. It was probably a side effect of all that fly agaric.

Anyway, what I should really have had was dark rum, as in Watson's Trawler, Navy rum or Stewart's. Dark rum is a traditional favourite in Shetland, probably due to the islands' maritime heritage. In fact, Stewart's is now wholly Shetland owned, after it was discovered that 90 per cent of sales were in the islands. I do draw the line at Morgan's Spiced. For some reason, that drink is always associated, in my experience with extremely bad, if entertaining, behaviour. I blame the turmeric. Or maybe the cinnamon.