I’m away for the Bank Holiday with Hatty.  We are in Laugharne (the ‘strangest town in Wales’ according to Dylan Thomas), staying at Brown’s Hotel

The air is clean, the people wholesome, the scenery is something else: a perfect opportunity for a healthy weekend of nourishing food, bracing walks and lungs full of clean air.  This surely is God’s own country.

Our first night sees us dangling our feet over the sea wall, eating chips and cheese.  Loaded to the eyeballs with dairy and carbs we spend the night propping up the bar which by midnight, we’ve drained of white wine and proceeded to down a half pint of filthy almond liqueur that even in my advanced state of inebriation I know to be an irreparably bad move.  It strips several layers of enamel and leaves an aftertaste like burning petrol.  Then there’s Hatty, bolt upright but fast asleep in her chair, holding a full glass, of which she spills not one drop.  Those are some skills, lady.

We stumble upstairs at 3 and wake again at 8.  I have a bastard behind the eyes and malignant gnomes are whacking my optic nerve with tiny hammers.  For the first time in a decade I think I might heave.  Unable to drag myself from under the duvet until well past lunchtime, the only thing that can save me is hair of the dog: several gin and tonics and some more chips.  Feeling re-humanised, we see no reason to change tack and drink through to the early hours.  We are joined by a pre-wedding party hanging out in their collective bathrobes, as well as a barely legal barman with designs on Hatty.  Whistling Mrs Robinson, we stumble upstairs, having somehow agreed to appear in the pub the next day as extras in a whisky commercial.

Day three. It’s 11 am and having almost achieved sobriety, we realise that the whisky commercial was not a dream.  We are backlit and handed a single malt.   We follow direction to chat, sniff and drink and whisky cauterises my oesophagus, bumping into the beans and black pudding I shovelled down at breakfast.  Cake ensues, then ice cream, alcohol, filthy cackling and not nearly enough sleep.

Thing is, some weekends are made for healthy living and recharging batteries and staying well and getting old.  But not this weekend.  This was not a detox.  This was a Tox. And sometimes everything that is bad for you is actually really good for you and exactly what you need.  My weekends away from kids and responsibilities are so few and so hard won that I’m not sure I want to spend them all being worthy.

Or (as attributed to Hunter S Thompson): “Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming – WOW – What a Ride!”