Janupause?

One of my managers used to have a month of abstinence. Every February he would go without the juice. As someone who liked a quaff or two and having spent time with him at hotels for various seminars and such, a quaff or two is putting it mildly, I was always bemused by this month of abstinence thing, but it was a habit he’d got into and he followed it religiously and on the first of March he’d be off to the pub…

Well, it seems he is not the only one:

It is the time of the Janupause, the annual month without alcohol, in which the state of blissful co-dependency that exists between my wife and me is turned inside out. Instead of racing each other to the bottom of a bottle of white wine, we are playing mind games under the guise of being mutually supportive.

Janupause? Well, that’s a new one on me. And, my manager didn’t do it for any particular reason, just as an exercise in self control –  a mind game he played for his own benefit. One that no one but he really understood. Tim Dowling and spouse are doing it for the detox, for the good of those temples that are their bodies. And they struggle. Indeed, he caves in after a week. Not much self-control there, then.

We get the usual claptrap we come to expect from a Guardian commenter; the trotting out without challenge, medical advice about how much people should drink –  in this instance, abstinence for two days a week –  and being paid-up members of the chatterati, he and his wife do their best to complete a month off the booze –  despite having all the self will of one of our cats when seeing a newly roast chicken on the kitchen top.

So, they like a drink or two… or three. Seems to me they like that quaff as did my manager. So, Tim, why not just indulge and to hell with the medical advice? Or, at least, don’t bother with the faux guilt trip as you try to do battle with your need to comply with the leftist nu-puritan agenda of temperance on the one hand and your own personal desire to pour gallons of the stuff down your throats on the other.