One of the most common questions I am asked is "Does my partner have an alcohol problem?".  This is not only a very common question it is also a very common problem.  It is estimated that, in the Western world, at least 1 in 10 drink in a way that could be harmful. 

Furthermore between 3 and 5% drink in a way that could be extremely harmful and about 1% would be classified as alcoholic.  So do these statistics help, probably not.  We will return to the question, and more importantly why people ask it, shortly but first of all let’s look at this question in a slightly different way.

Yes, Houston, There Is A Problem!

About two weeks ago I was fortunate enough to take possession of a brand-new holiday lodge in the beautiful Devon countryside.  This was a lifestyle choice to get out of the city more often, spend quality time as a family, to walk and get fit and to provide a wonderful environment to work and write.  The lodge is great.  It has everything you would ever need, washing machine, dishwasher and even wireless broadband. 

So as you see it is not exactly back to nature or at least not in a primitive way anyway.  However last week we were the victims of the UK summer, which seems to be getting progressively wetter.  It has been raining a lot recently but one day last week we had rain that was absolutely torrential, it just poured down. 

I love storms especially when I am cozy and dry and looking out at them, makes me feel as if I’m in a little cocoon.  An hour or so into this storm we became aware of a pool of water under the central heating boiler, so was the boiler leaking?  Further investigation showed us that the rain was coming in the flue in the roof, landing on the boiler and running off it onto the floor. 

Next-day the repair man arrived.  After an inspection he told us that that the leak was caused by the wrong type of rain (not sure what the right type is).  When we looked at him completely incredulous he started into a technical explanation about the angle of the tiles and wind direction, almost certainly designed to baffle and make sure ignorant laypeople like us to stop us from asking any more awkward questions. 

Finally I said to him I’m not really that interested in long explanations about what is wrong, I already know what is wrong, there’s a leak, what I need to know is can you fix it?  All I want is that we do not have any more water coming through the roof.

And The Point Is?

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