Not enough fun

I'm not very good at self-indulgence, at enjoying myself freely and spontaneously. I always hold back, as if too much personal fun might be a bit decadent and immature.

I see other people letting themselves go - boozing, bingeing, joking, raiding the shops, cheering football teams - with so much enthusiasm I'm taken aback. I'm seldom that enthusiastic or uninhibited about even my biggest passions. A sort of quiet pleasure is the best I can manage.

I guess I come from that social background where too much obvious enjoyment was seen as "showing off" or "drawing attention to yourself". All horribly undignified and childish. Enjoyment was all very well up to a point, but not if it meant "making a spectacle of yourself". That would never do. I suppose it's all related to the stiff upper-lip tradition that used to riddle the English middle classes.

There's also a part of me that thinks too much enjoyment can only be a slippery slope to total debauchery and public humiliation. One drink too many and I'm bound to end up an alcoholic. Too much cheesecake and ice cream and naturally I'll be a 20-stone tub of lard in days. Just go a bit too far and in a trice I'll be out of control like a runaway car.

Maybe I'm influenced by past occasions when enjoyment turned sour. I can remember driving a girlfriend home when I was roaring drunk, lucky not to have killed us both. Another time, on a heavy dose of LSD, I was oblivious to traffic and almost killed myself again. I've played practical jokes and seriously upset the victims. Such memories make me wary of too much abandon.

But I do my best. When others around me are getting wilder and wilder, I tell myself to loosen up and get in the swing of it all. For pity's sake, Nick, throw away the rule book, forget all those childhood vetoes and let your natural impulses take over. And the result? Usually a bit like a lifelong virgin sampling a brothel. It's hard to change the habits of a lifetime.