So yeah, last time, I was off the booze for about a month. During that month I dated – of which more later – but incidentally, dating sober, should you be considering it is not to be advised. While, it wasn’t as horrific as I thought it was going to be, the soft-focusing effects of alcohol should not be underestimated.

I think of booze as a real-life Photoshop blur tool, gently fuzzing both my perception and that of others. Alcohol softens the more abrasive bits of my personality, allowing someone time to get to know the nicer bits. And it makes me a bit more forgiving of their sharper corners too. It’s possible, of course, that you end up coming to the same conclusions, only a little quicker without alcohol than with it, I’m still not entirely sure. But generally, I feel dating is better with booze than without.

But I’ve digressed. So yes, having spent 10 days before my cycle off the booze, and then about 14 days injecting hormones and – eventually – having my eggs taken out, I went home that day, REALLY looking forward to the celebratory champagne I was planning on popping that night. Only it didn’t happen like that.

They’d already told me that after the procedure, I’d be given antibiotics to prevent me getting an infection. I’d also already been told that one of the antibiotics I had to take was a suppository (one that you stick up your arse, as opposed to up your vagina which would at least have made some sort of sense) – no, I don’t know why either. So, when I took my private prescription to my local pharmacist and he looked at it and lowered his voice and said “Um, you know that one of these isn’t, um, taken orally…” I was very blasé “Oh, yes, yes, I’m aware of that.”

It was when he handed them over and said “So, no alcohol for the next five days” that I was less blasé. In fact I think my actually words were: “Are you fucking shitting me?” Poor man. He must have been so confused. I’d given him a prescription printed on the headed notepaper of a fertility clinic and was going into one because he told me I couldn’t have alcohol.

Pharmacist: “Er, no, you can’t drink with Flagyl.”

Me: “But FIVE days? I’m only taking it for THREE days.”

Pharmacist: “Yes, it stays in your system for 48 hours.”

I thought I was going to cry. Again. But I didn’t, not then anyway. It was later, when I was on the phone to my friend Dr M, listening to her recap: “So, hang on, first they say you have to take antibiotics, THEN they tell you one of them’s a suppository and THEN you find out you can’t drink with it? It’s like ‘Oooh, just when you though things couldn’t get worse….'” that I found myself crying laughing at the ridiculous tragi-comic glory of it all. Honestly, you couldn’t make this shit up.