I made a mental note to give up alcohol. Again

It started with an email from an actor in the US. He said I should get out and socialise more, if I wanted to shake off the melancholy.

“Go wild,” he said. Apparently he was having a wild time in the US, attending film premieres and doing pilot television work and enjoying intense encounters with Amazonian women in the elevators of various hotels.

“There’s as much wildlife here in New York,” he wrote gleefully, “as there is in an Irish hedgerow.”

I envied him and so decided to treat myself to a night out in Athlone, at the All-Ireland Drama Festival.

I was passing Ganly’s hardware store as I drove into town, which had a sale on, so I popped in before it closed. There were two fat ladies upstairs in the restaurant discussing which chocolate bun they would have, and downstairs a hermit nun was looking at lawnmowers. I spoke to the nun.

“Are you going to buy the sit-up lawnmower?” I joked. She laughed heartily and I admired the purity of purpose in her face and her devotion to the solitary life.

I couldn’t get a ticket for the drama festival though, so I ended up in a bar talking to a man with a cravat and a wheezy chest who was in a John B Keane play 50 years ago. There’s nothing as sad as enduring someone else’s company just because there is drink on the counter. On one trip to the bathroom, I made a mental note to give up alcohol yet again.

In fact, I think my problem is that I take too much exercise. I've been walking a lot up the misty Leitrim hills and that builds up the energy, and then I can't contain myself watching Game of Thrones without guzzling a bottle of wine.

After parting from the wheezy-chested actor, I checked into a fine hotel and the following morning, I was staggering around the foyer where a wedding was in full swing. The bride was outside the door having a smoke in the rain, and men with pink shirts and loose white ties and tight grey trousers were hanging around a coffee table, which was laden with early-morning pints.

“Oh, so you’re up,” someone shouted at another young rascal who had just entered with a sports bag over his shoulder and too much aftershave.

“I’m heading for training at 12,” he said.

“Are you not coming to the church?”

“No,” the sporty boy said, and the lad with the pint said: “Listen, I’m sorry about last night.”

“You’ll get a heart attack when the squad car comes up to the church this afternoon looking for you,” the sporty boy said, ominously, and I wondered what they had been up to the previous night.

“Do you think there’s going to be trouble?” the lad whispered, his face falling apart like scrambled eggs.

“Say nothing,” the sporty boy said. “It’ll blow over.” And he was out the door as nifty as a rabbit.

I had a voucher for a treatment in the spa but I was still feeling the effects of the wine and I looked like an orang-utan with a sick stomach. The idea of going into a little fancy spa didn’t seem like a good idea, although I did gawk in the glass door.

Soft music oozed from the walls and jugs of orange juice stood on the tables. The lights were low and the air full of incense, and a girl at the reception desk had manicured nails and perfectly frosted lips. Ladies from the big houses of Westmeath sat on cushions, wrapped in white dressing gowns.

“Any chance of an appointment later in the day?” I inquired, thinking that the hangover might lessen as the hours went by.

“Usually Saturdays are not bad,” she said, “but with the wedding today we’re run off our feet.”

So I withdrew to the foyer and noticed a friend from Mullingar checking in and wearing a white feathery hat.

“I’m here for the wedding,” she said, “but I’m totally stressed.”

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “you’d like a massage before noon?” She stared at me and smiled, so I had to explain that I didn’t mean some fumbled intimacy in her room.

“A massage in the spa,” I added. “I’d love to,” she said, “but it’s expensive.”

“I can give you a voucher.” And I did.

On the way home to Leitrim I dropped into Ganly’s again and bought six bags of compost, because sometimes in life you have to go wild.