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So what is d-day? (No, not the Normandy landings, that would be a capital D and far more important than this). I don’t drink. It’s not that I don’t like drinking, it’s just that I have funny kidneys and drinking puts them under strain, which causes them to produce stones. Stones hurt, therefore I don’t drink. Except I do:

• At a wedding I will have a mouthful of champagne to toast the bride and groom.
• On new years eve I will buy a [normally half] bottle of champagne and toast in the new year with a mouthful. The rest is then drunk by one of more designated drinkers.
• At a funeral or wake of someone I know I will have one drink.
• On d-day I get drunk. Not pissed, just swayingly refreshed.

d-day used to be the 28th of May and was quite simply an act of remembering one of my best friends on the anniversary of their death. If you knew Scott you’d understand that toasting him with a glass of lemonade just doesn’t work. Instead it was a can, or pint (depending on if I was at the pub or not) of Stella. I hate Stella, but that’s not the point. Also, we’re not talking riotously drunk here, it’s simply that I drink so little that a can of beer is plenty to get me nicely sozzled.

May has a few more anniversaries in it now, not least of which is the death of my best friends father. Getting drunk once a year isn’t a problem. Getting drunk several times in one month is, so I decided to formalise d-day and place it on the last bank holiday of the month (the idea being that I wouldn’t loose my weekend with it being a long one).

Now it may sound like d-day is a bit morbid and depressing. It isn’t. It’s a celebration of life. The idea is not to get shitfaced and mope about, the idea is to toast two great lives and keep their memories alive. I also use it to celebrate the fact that I quit smoking, mark the anniversary of moving into my new house and, this year, celebrate getting a massively long paid holiday and a whole raft of other stuff.

So there you go. You know now and can stop asking