Alcohol

Christopher Howse has just written a book about Soho. He drank there regularly with Michael Heath, The Spectator’s cartoon editor, in the 1980s. Last week, in the editor’s office, they remembered a vanished world. MICHAEL HEATH: I introduced you to Soho. CHRISTOPHER HOWSE: Well, I don’t know if you’re entirely to blame for that. But you taught me a thing or two. HEATH: There were such things as groupies for cartoonists in those days. There were girls hanging round you in Fleet Street waiting for you to finish the drawings for the following day and then they’d go off with the cartoonists and have meals or go to various clubs. The cartoonists were wealthy, really, because it was cash in hand. You couldn’t get a cartoonist who was stable.

At three o’clock I took half a bottle of Glenmorangie with me to Jimmy’s. That it was Burns Night, and Jimmy happens to be a proud Scot, was mere coincidence. When I walked in, Jimmy was putting finishing surgical touches to the back of a bullet-head. ‘Do you drink whisky, Jimmy?’ I said. ‘Oh aye,’ he said sadly, snipping at a single hair. But before I could take my coat off, he ordered me out again to the corner shop to buy lager to go with it. ‘What sort of lager?’ I said. He said: ‘You know that new lager called 13? Brewed by Guinness?’ ‘Never heard of it,’ I said. Jimmy looked at me pensively for a second or two before deciding that ignorance on that scale had to be disregarded.

January 31st means two things: firstly, the dreaded day on which your self-assessment tax return is due. And secondly – and probably more cause for celebration – is the fact that it’s the final day of Dry January. For those who gave up alcohol for the month, tonight – being the last day of January – is the last day that they need deprive themselves any longer. (Let's face it: you might need a drink after wading through the long-winded HMRC process, after all). But is the whole 'Dry January' thing a gimmick? Perhaps, to a certain extent. On the other hand, it certainly won’t do you any harm. There's a wide array of health benefits to giving up alcohol – and just think about what going sober for a month might mean for your wallet.

We ascended the gangplank and were smartly directed to the ship’s library, where the seated purser swiped my debit card and took our passports. This purser’s face was prematurely aged, disfigured by misfortune, implacably hostile. Would she be keeping our passports until the voyage end, we asked humbly? We would get them back at the end of the cruise and not before, she barked, furious at our ignorance of the ship’s rules. Cabin 302 was one deck down, next to the dining room. Catriona’s suitcase was already placed outside the cabin door. Mine perhaps had yet to complete its journey through the cruise-terminal security machinery. The cabin was roomier than expected. A sealed, chintz-curtained porthole vouchsafed a view of the horrible sea.

Not since the days of William Hogarth has Mother's Ruin featured so prominently in the national consciousness. In the 21st century, gin is seriously big business as evidenced by the slew of pop-up bars and festivals devoted to this elixir of the gods as well as the number of bottles weighing down supermarket shelves. Just this week Sainbury's launched two new gins aimed at connoisseurs while Lidl continues to sell inordinate amounts of its award-winning tipple. Now the juniper-flavoured favourite has reached another milestone. Figures from HM Revenue & Customs reveal that sales of gin have helped spirits overtake beer for the first time.

‘Jeremy, I want you to sit here next to me — unless you’re frightened of me?’ We were briefly introduced at her father’s funeral party; otherwise our hostess and I hadn’t met before. We were about to sit down in her recently deceased father’s house, which she has inherited, and this, she said, was her first dinner party. Her father and I became friends two years before he died, aged 82. Everyone told me he was a terrible snob with a vile temper but I only ever found him entirely jovial and an erudite and witty conversationalist. ‘Should I be frightened of you?’ I said. ‘I am who I am,’ she said. ‘What you see is what you get. I’m sorry. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. I know I’m not.

Six Storeys on Soho is in a slender grey townhouse on Soho Square: a bar, restaurant and club. It is technically art deco, but it feels much older; it grasps back for 18th-century Soho without the typhoid epidemic and the corpses. It used to be a gay bar called the Edge, but the gay bars are closing in London, victims of a new epidemic called Grindr. Now it feels like Mary Poppins’s house after she lost hope. I came to the Edge with my friend the artist Sebastian Horsley, who wore purple suits and a top hat, and made A.A. Gill look slovenly. He kept a gun by his bedside on Meard Street, but in the end he did not need it. He fell asleep on heroin and did not wake up, and he would love it here. He would match the furniture, and they have a lot of gin.

It’s chucking-out time at my local pub, and the high street is full of idiots. They’ve all had a lot to drink, but they’re in no hurry to go home. They’re looking for a party, somewhere loud and lairy to go on to. They’d settle for more booze, but some speed or skunk would be even better. It’s a scene I’ve seen a thousand times, but lately something’s changed: these tearaways aren’t teenagers — they’re in their fifties and sixties. Meet the Saga louts, those feckless folk who refuse to grow up even as they approach old age. Saga louts are a pain, and I should know because I’m one of them. I turned 50 last year, making me one of the youngest members of the tribe.

Nice airport was more or less deserted. Two-and-a-half hours early for the easyJet flight to Gatwick, I had a leisurely cup of tea and a bun at a café kiosk before going through security, sharing a counter with a couple of young gay Frenchmen who were bickering respectfully over the timing of some future arrangement. I took out my 99p 1987 charity-shop paperback, Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse by Patrick Hamilton, and began to read. I love Patrick Hamilton’s novels, but until that moment hadn’t bothered to try the later ones, which he wrote when his alcoholism had taken a grip and he couldn’t get out of bed, as they are generally considered to be disappointingly bad. But for 99p I thought I may as well see for myself, and I read hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

Here I go again. I have stopped smoking. Until recently I had been smoking about 40 cigarettes a day, but it is now two weeks since I last had one. Initially I used e-cigarettes and nicotine lozenges to help me give up, but now I already feel I can manage without them. I think I may have conquered my addiction. I feel I could be free at last. But I hesitate to say so, because it is a feeling I have often had before. Like Mark Twain, I have often stopped smoking, but always after a period of time, even one as long as five years, I have taken it up again. If one wants to stop smoking, one really should try to avoid reading Mark Twain, because his enthusiasm for it is infectious.