Midweek Drinks

Lunch with Pete goes swimmingly. He is enjoying his champagne and I successfully managed to stop him refilling my glass following my third helping, after a lot of pleading and saying his name over and over again, “Pete, come on, Pete, I’ve told you, please Pete you know what I have this afternoon Pete, do me a favour today Pete” and so on. Three drinks were three more than I planned but a pretty good outcome when you’re drinking with Mr Dunstan; the man provides the blueprint on excess living. He owns cars he cannot even fit his belly into.

He and I have negotiated his input into the fund. Another of my Rules of the Race is that if you don’t ask, you don’t get. Pete offered to contribute $250,000 to the fund. I asked for $500,000, and got it. If there was any doubt in Brian’s mind that I am the man for the manager role then this will defeat that. I ponder what Jono is up to as I work out the details of receiving the funds from Pete. He’s probably doing what he normally does at lunchtime, eating a Big Mac with a side helping of cigarettes.

You need to ask in order to get in most circumstances. Too many rat racers sit around waiting for things to happen. The best example of this is a pay rise. If you want a pay rise, ask for one, you’ll normally get one and if not, this may be the cue for you to start looking for a new job. I apply this rule to most aspects of both my city and daily life. Pete didn’t make asking to stay off the booze very easy, but it worked eventually.

Today is a Tuesday and normally that would have little or no effect on my decision to indulge in a tipple at lunchtime or after work, but with today’s meeting I have a very good reason to stay on the wagon. There are some issues with midweek drinking, some to consider before, after and during indulging, but mostly these are completely ignored by city dwellers.

Being a rat racer, I’m often approached by friends or colleagues (usually the single ones) who want to engage in a little midweek drinking to talk business or pleasure. Knowing this to be the case, I conduct my necessary and enjoyable gym workouts mostly when I have time for a lunch break. Meeting a friend or colleague for a drink at 5 or 6pm means you can quite easily have 4 or 5 drinks by 8pm. 8pm is reasonably early to head home, so you keep going till 9pm, and by 9pm you have had 7 or 8 drinks and so you’re happy to have a couple more. By 10pm you’re moderately drunk…and it’s a Tuesday.

When having midweek drinks, you often have midweek drink diner options, consisting of poor quality and overpriced steak, or numerous bags of chips and maybe a post pub Hungry Jacks thrown in for good measure. Midweek drinks always seem like a good idea at the time. The bars are reasonably quiet; you get served quickly and are able to hold a conversation with our accomplice or two at volume that means you don’t feel like you’re talking to your grandmother. The only real problem with midweek drinking is that you usually wake up on a Wednesday or Thursday morning feeling like you ate your cat’s dinner, decided to drink sea water and jogged up the Centre Point Tower’s staircase two or three times before getting into bed…which you consequentially will be back out of in about 5 hours.

I look at my Omega, it’s 2.40pm and I need to get going, not least because my Blackberry is buzzing like a bee in my pocket. Two things to do now; get Pete to unshackle me then ask the maitre d' for her phone number.