To Quit Drinking Alcohol

I only started drinking alcohol at 30. Before that I was drinking what cats drink; water, milk and such things. I didn’t like the taste of alcohol. When I was 23 years, I once drank half a stout bottle of Kingfisher (sweet and viscous, like cough syrup) and felt light-headed for what seemed like a week. So, yes, alcohol has never been my thing. Nobody is counting but I have been drinking for only 12 years. I started off with wine, then some cheap brandys, then now whiskies. The palate leads the man.

“Do you think you will quit drinking one day?” Someone asked me the other day as we shared a drink. I said I hoped not! Unless, of course, for health reasons. Otherwise, I hope I will be able to enjoy whisky until I’m very old. Because what do people in their 60s do after they have stopped working and their children have gotten heartbreaks and children of their own? Fine, most of these people own hardware shops. Or are doing farming because it seems like a sensible thing to do at 65. But how do they occupy the other half of their lives? Golf? (Gasp). Travelling? (Can you travel the whole month?). Charity work? (Makes sense) Joining the village church committee to discuss fencing of the perimeter that keeps getting breached by goats? Attending loud harambees as guest of honour “from Nairobi”? How do folk in their 60s spend their free time?

My vision board is to spend a lot of time in the village. On a boat. A white boat. Like the one Dexter Morgan uses to kill people in the movie series ‘Dexter’. Every other morning, wearing shorts and vest, I drift into the lake when it’s calm and the sky is blue. And I bob there for hours, fishing. In the evening, I sit on the balcony and nurse a double of whisky, soft music from Congo. Every day. Until I die. So no, I’m not quitting.