SUNDAY 25TH SEPTEMBER 2022
I’ve been on a pretty even keel this week. No cravings for alcohol – even when settling down to my first Strictly Saturday of the new season, a 0% beer did just fine. Now that the Queen is in her final resting place, the news has turned once more to politics and the measures the new government are putting in place or not putting in place, as the case may be, to combat the cost of living crisis.
MY WHY
There is no getting away from it – the cost of living has gone up massively over the past few months and we’re all having to look at ways to cut back so we can meet the soaring fuel bills. I am curious to see how Big Alcohol is going to address this. On-sales are going to have to go up as landlords and restauranteurs deal with increased delivery charges and the increased cost of heating their premises, not to mention the cost of their raw materials and the energy required to cook them. It’s inevitable that so many of them are going to have to close because putting their prices up to cover their costs is going to make eating and drinking out a luxury that the average person on the street will have to cut back on. But what about off-sales? Will they go up like everything else? I’m inclined to think that they won’t. They have to keep us drinking so it has to still seem affordable for us to drink at home, even if we can’t go out and do it. If fact, the increased sales will allow them to swallow the cost of not putting their prices up. Job done. I’ve never really thought too much about the financial cost of drinking until very recently. Buying alcohol was just a given, like putting fuel in the car or buying coffee or washing powder – I never actually saw it as an unnecessary luxury that could be cut out in lean times. Even in recent years, when I’ve had less in my pocket than I had in my child-free days, I’ve thought nothing of spending as much on a glass of wine in a restaurant as I would on an entire bottle in the supermarket, just because it wasn’t my turn to drive. I’ve read crazy figures about the estimated amount that drinkers spend on alcohol over their lifetime and I don’t even want to go there – what is spent is spent and, to be completely honest, most of it was spent on having a pretty good time so I’m not going to grudge it retrospectively. But what about going forward, now that I know that alcohol no longer serves me like it once did? Without thinking too much about it, I could list my current short-term goals as the following: – to up-level my health, increase my fitness, lose a bit of weight, be the best mum I can be and get to that near-mythical state of feeling like I’m on top of things both at home and at work. Drinking alcohol will not help me achieve any of those goals – on the contrary, it will take me further away from each and every one of them. It suddenly seems totally counter-intuitive to spend what little disposable income I have on indulging a habit that is only ever going to stop me achieving my goals.
Theme Tune: Price Tag by Jessie J