Why Budgie?

Budgie is a drinking name given to me from my travelling days, in my mid twenties, living in London.
The nickname also stems from a terrible time in my teenage years... let me explain.

Glandular fever, or Mono as it is known in the States, is a horrible but thankfully temporary, life-sucking medical condition that renders you lifeless, lethargic and worst of all, unable to consume alcohol for many months.
A small form of torture for any teenager.

So along with a small stint in hospital at 16 years old, 9 kgs of weight loss, jaundice and partial kidney failure,
I am left with a fairly dodgy liver for life.

Fast forward to my twenties and to my university days, I was stoked. Whilst many of my friends were racking up huge bar tabs and alcohol budgets to factor into their student loans, I on the other hand, was one cheap drunk. A drink or two before town, one drink at the bar and I was anyone's. Well, not really.

More like I was the gutter's or nursing a toilet bowl within hours if I wasn't careful.

So back to the Budgie.

Five years on and travelling and living in the U.K. I was still blessed (or cursed depending how you look at it) with a low tolerance to alcohol. My travel fund was mounting and my drinking fund minimal. Sunday sessions were always affordable at the pub. I was quite good at assessing my level of intoxication at this point in my life. Three snakies (read my blog entry on my London days for this explanation) in the late afternoon, followed with a good beer buzz by dinnertime, dancing on the table by 7pm, sobering by 8pm and home and showered in bed by 9pm. Hangover shamangover. Monday morning I was fresh as a daisy.  Well this worked, until sometimes I got drunk enough not to know how drunk that I actually was. So carnage inevitably prevailed. Frequently.

It got a little ridiculous how quickly I got drunk. My friends would buy rounds. I would buy rounds to try and compensate for my lack of drinking. Always declaring "I was one drink ahead" as my liver was trying to chug away processing the backed up alcohol in my system. And within a short time I'd call it quits and either bail out of rounds, or bail off to the bathroom.

A South African travelling buddy of mine declared me the bird in the coalmine. "You know that bird they used to have in cages in the mines" she explained... "the one that hung by the roof so that if gas levels were too high, or oxygen too low, the bird would die and the miners would get out"..

We couldn't quite remember the name of that bird.   (It is a canary for reference).  So hence I am Budgie. 

If I go down, everyone has at least one more drink in them before they end their night too.

and why a balcony? Because that is my perch.