High Sobriety Read Online Free PDF

drinking our way around the South and North islands. We returned just before the turn of the millennium, and I landed my first job: as a reporter for a regional weekly paper just outside Edinburgh.
    At the same time, I took on a part-time bar job, working Friday nights in Espionage, a new James Bond–themed nightclub. It was a cavernous labyrinth encasing five bars over four floors, starting at street level and burrowing deep into the bowels of Edinburgh’s Old Town. It was also a building that cradled my past; between the ages of 16 and 19 it had been my second home. Back then it was called The Mission, and that was an appropriate name. I’m not religious, but I worshipped this place with all the fervour of a holy man, prostrating myself every weekend on a blackened altar of metal, grunge, and indie. With fake ID in one hand, vodka and Coke in the other, and dressed in Seattle-standard shorts over leggings, flannel shirts, and Doc Martens, my friends and I would lose ourselves in lyrics that spoke to our teen angst. Returning to work there in 2000 was the ultimate pilgrimage.
    The club had a different air to it in its new incarnation. There were neon fridges filled with Bacardi Breezers where the cloakroom used to be, and the bouncers wore suits and earpieces instead of combat trousers and beanies. But the makeover didn’t fool me: on each level I swear I could see sweat dripping down walls, and could smell patchouli oil and Red Stripe soaked into the sticky floor. I saw snapshots of my past in every corner. It might have undergone a slick facelift, with leather furniture and a lengthy cocktail list, but at its core still beat the heart of a grunge venue. But all those memories would be eclipsed when, in my old stomping ground, I met the man who would bring me to Melbourne.
    His name was Hugh. He also worked behind the bar. When we first met and he told me that he was a backpacker from Tasmania, I must confess I wasn’t immediately sure what nationality that made him. But I was sure of one thing — he was very cute. He had the sort of boyish smile and luminescent blue eyes that could loosen the knickers of a nun. He simply had to be my boyfriend.
    On Valentine’s Day 2000 I made my move. Fiona and I got pissed and went to Espionage, where we could get discounted drinks and I could eye up the cute Tasmanian barman. Hugh — who, fortunately for me, had broken up with his South African girlfriend the previous day — had no idea what was coming. My chat-up line, delivered with all the subtlety of a marching band at a séance, went something like this: ‘The trouble with all you Aussie backpackers is you come here to see Scotland and all you do is hang out with other backpackers. YOOOU [dramatic pause, wagging finger] should be with a Scottish chick.’ He politely said he was flattered, but that it was too soon after his break-up to contemplate a new relationship.
    His romance ban didn’t last long. We hooked up the next night after dancing to ’70s funk at a dingy venue called Jaffa Cake, in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle. Never underestimate the seductive powers of a nightclub named after a chocolate biscuit, or the feminine wiles of a half-pissed Scottish chick with a plunging neckline and access to her mother’s expansive collection of malt whiskies. And from this most unlikely of beginnings came an eight-year relationship that would take me to a life on the other side of the world.
    When I arrived in Melbourne in the winter of 2001, I felt right at home in a country that not only had an international reputation as a hard-drinking nation, but also seemed to celebrate it. If Scotland were a man, he’d be wearing a kilt and sinking single-malt whisky by an open fire; Australia would be a larrikin in board shorts and thongs, chugging beer at a backyard barbecue. Language barrier aside, I suspect they’d be good mates. In those first few months, I think I heard