TO BLOG OR NOT TO BLOG, THAT IS THE QUESTION

There aren’t that many good reasons to inflict a blog on the world. Fighting for a good cause or campaigning against an injustice are obviously way up there. As is exposing wrong-doing.

I must add another – wayward legs.

Mine went ridiculous at the weekend, and I feel I must recount the tale to purge my shame.

It was a Quiz And Pizza Night in the village hall. The questions were tough, the pizzas were squidgy, and the red wine was soft. Not a label I knew, but a smooth easy-drinking wine. So easy it wasn’t long before our table was checking out another bottle – to see if it was of a consistently high standard (well, the first one could have been a fluke). It was fine. So was the next one.

Alcohol has an extra side-effect on me. It makes me want to smoke. Tobacco, I mean; smoke doesn’t pour out of my ears. And for somebody who has given up cigarettes, that’s not a good thing. Anyway, as a break was called before we compared answers, I had an unstoppable urge to join the pariahs in the cold outside and cadge a fag.

The cold air hit me – and my legs just went.

Without being able to do a thing about it, they started to do a passable impression of Bambi on ice crossed with Billy Connolly’s famed impression of a Saturday night drunk in Glasgow. Only this was village England, where people don’t generally do the things I was doing.

I bumped into people, I crashed into the wheely bin, I tried to hang on to a handrail and then a village friend. Talk about embarrassing.

I remember having my ciggy, somehow; I remember going back in the hall where, in the warmer air, my legs recovered some of the equilibrium; I remember Mrs N giving me that deadly look that wives reserve for errant husbands who embarrass them in public; I vaguely remember walking home and ricocheting my way up the stairs.

Apparently I went straight to sleep and snored for England.

Then it was Sunday. I did my penance by dusting and hoovering right through the house and trying to avoid the conversation that must surely come about how undignified it is for somebody of my age to get staggering drunk.

How could I convince her that it was only my legs that were drunk? The rest of me was okay; otherwise I would have thrown up.

Well, the conversation didn’t materialise until the evening – probably when she estimated I had stewed long enough – but she kept it short and polite. She sensed my shame was enough to ensure it never happens again.

In fact, it was enough to consider going teetotal. Well, after Christmas maybe. Well, I’ll definitely stick to beer at the next Quiz And Pizza Night.

If Mrs N can face it.