I’ve always enjoyed different foods and drink, finding the good, condemning the bad, never quiet about it. This is personal taste, of course, different people like different things. I’m always happy, perhaps too happy, to discuss this, because that’s a very good way of finding new good things, although this is ruined by my annoying habit of forgetting the recommended names.

I’ve always enjoyed good beer; I’ve never kept that quiet. So I’ve grown something of a reputation of something of a drinker. I’ve played up to this.

The irony is the times I played this the most are the times I drank the least. Once I’d escaped college, I lived in villages, socialised in towns, commuting by car, so had to drive to and from the pub. I kept my drinking to a couple of pints, or the next day was hassle. This lasted from my early 20s to my late 40s.

Things changed when I returned to city living, and kept changed when I departed Britain’s new dourism.

Now, last Friday, myself and a colleague left the company. We had a jolly good leaving bash; lunch in The Winding Stair, an excellent Dublin restaurant; the evening in the Porterhouse, a pub with very good beers.

So here was I, with a reputation for enjoying my drink, in a pub I’d chosen, for my leaving bash. I was drinking with good people, my ex-colleagues, male and female, all younger than me. I was, of course, expected to be on the booze the whole night. And the bastards, without exception, all of them, beefy guys and petite girls, all the between, all of them, dammit, drank me under the table.

The workplace was wrong for me. But I enjoyed the company of the people there, and will miss them. Thank you, guys and gals, enjoy yourselves.