Coming over a little queer

“I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled”

Last year on holiday in France I had what can only be described as a funny turn. I felt like I was going to faint while the expression ‘legs turned to jelly’ suddenly made perfect sense. My trusty old legs which have been with me so long and only very rarely let me down suddenly seemed like they might collapse at any moment.

My wife asked me if I was alright, I nodded manfully but whispered something about needing a sit-down and a drink. Luckily we were in one of those French towns bursting with cafes so we stopped at literally the next one, the really touristy place that I had been avoiding. I had a Coca-Cola and a realising that I really needed food, ordered a hamburger and chips - which turned out to be one of the best hamburgers I’ve had, served medium rare. I love the French sometimes.

If you’re going to have a funny turn, Saint Valery sur Somme is a good place to do it

In truth this wasn’t the first time I’d had a funny turn. They started to come on in 2022, I think. I’d get the symptoms above and have to sit down and eat and drink something. One time I came over a little queer in Tesco and had to got to the bench opposite where I ate an entire bag of apples before regaining to strength to walk the half mile home.

This summer on our return to England I went to see the doctor and amazingly managed to get an appointment the following day with the nurse practitioner. She took all kinds of tests but really I knew what was wrong with me, blood sugar levels, hypoglycemia.

For about the past 30 years I have pretty much eaten and drunk what I wanted which usually means lots of pasta, bread, meat, coffee and, though I don’t think anywhere near as much as I did in my 20s and 30s, alcohol. Breakfast usually meant toast and marmalade or Shreddies followed by a pot of black coffee. If I was hungry on the go, I’d had a Pret sandwich or crisps. I do eat a lot of vegetables as well and walk a lot so I’m not that unhealthy but most of calorie intake was simple carbohydrates.

The big worry is that I might have some sort of diabetes but happily the tests came back negative. So it was all about managing my blood sugar levels. I won’t bore you with my diet, this isn’t a wellness blog, but the two biggest changes are that if I’m going anywhere I take a nut and oat bar in case I start feeling faint and I have more fruit and nuts for breakfast. It’s out with the Shreddies and in with the Fruit n’ Fibre. Caffeine seems to exacerbate things so I have cut my daily intake my a third. As does dehydration caused my drinking too much.

For a long time now I haven’t been able to process alcohol like I used to. I remember the late novelist Justin Cartwright (I highly recommend his work, try Leading the Cheers or The Promise of Happiness) telling me how he was a terrific luncher in his 30s but by 50 found that wine didn’t agree with him anymore so he gave it up completely. I know quite a few people like that. It’s not that they were ever waking up in their own mess alcoholics, they just stopped enjoying it. My wife, never a big drinker, now might have what she calls a ‘weak as a kitten’, a whisky and soda, heavy on the water, but generally goes for zero ABV drinks.

I’m a long way from that stage but I’ve noticed certain ways my body struggles. Too much wine especially combined with very spicy food leads to the most painful acid indigestion. I now know what Kingsley Amis meant when he complained that wines “irritate the large intestine”. I’ll sometimes toss and turn at night, burping painfully. This is before we get on to the snoring. I’m writing these words from the spare room after my wife banished me.

I am telling you all this not to try to elicit sympathy but because I am exactly the sort of person that the drinks industry describes as ‘sober curious’. It’s a funny phrase as it sounds like the person in question on permanently inebriated but vaguely interested in perhaps spending part of his life not intoxicated. Tomorrow I’ll take a look at some of the products available aimed at this apparently burgeoning sector of the market. Most are hideous but there are some nice ones.

Oh and happy new year! I was sort of toying with doing a round-up of the previous year’s work as others have done but I really want to crack on with 2025. Surely it can’t be as bad as 2024?