Dear Euan,

I SYMPATHISE with you because I too, when I was about your age, ended up face down and very queasy after a disordered night out. I was 16 and growing up - or failing to grow up - in Armley, Leeds.

Every Saturday night staff at the local swimming bath covered the pool with planks and set up the place as a dance hall, which was great fun if you could dance and if you weren't scared witless at the mere sight of a girl.

I had two left feet and girls terrified me. Well, terrified is hardly the word. There is a famous painting of the Last Judgment by Leonardo and in it a condemned soul is descending into hell. All the sights of torment lie before him but so fascinating are they that he can cover up only one eye: with the other he stares obsessed into the fate that awaits him. That's the effect girls had on me.

I was always falling in love. Trouble was, I was too emotionally paralysed and nervous to do much about it. I could write verses and send letters, but it was the face-to-face encounter that floored me.

All my friends were consummate Lotharios with their Brylcreemed hair and winkle-picker shoes. I used to get myself all spruced up and make the effort to turn out at the dance, but the atmosphere overwhelmed me: the blare of the saxophones and the heady scent of perfume. The redhead Anne I loved. Corinne with her long hair I adored. Margaret's voice was so ravishingly that I almost fainted every time she said "Hello".

So if you were too clumsy to dance and too tongue-tied to speak, all that was left was to drink. I wasn't very practised at drinking either. After a few halves of bitter, the dancers looked as if they were motionless and the room was going round. The band, instead of being out there, seemed to be playing inside my head. The girls untouchable in their rustling gingham. And me squirming in a sort of impotent ecstasy.

Then one of them - a dazzler known as "Ponytail" for obvious reasons - came over and asked me if I ever went to the pictures. It turned out she didn't like dancing either. She said she liked Juliette Greco and that she was an Existentialist. She said: "Let's go to the pictures next Saturday. They're showing Last Year at Marienbad." But then she told me she had to be home, and with that she was gone.

I was so excited I carried on drinking. Rod Boom came up and said: "Did you get off with that bird then - that weirdo?" Weirdo? I nearly smashed him in the face! Rod said: "She looked as if she'd just come from a funeral." I said: "I'm taking her to the pictures next week." He said: "Let's have another pint."

We had another few then went out over Armley Park for some fresh air. Too late and too much. The trees looked as if they were walking and the stars falling out of the sky. That's when I fell over and was violently sick. All I could think was that Ponytail would be ashamed of me.

So, as I said Euan, I sympathise mate. You're not the first and you won't be the last to make an exhibition of yourself. What I can't stomach is your dad's reaction - that stricken expression, the quivering lip and all that touchy-feely sanctimonious: "We're a close family, he's a good kid really and we'll get through to the other side of this." Then we had to endure all those sonorous lectures in the newspapers about alcohol abuse. Euan, anyone would have thought you'd heaved a brick through the glass case and run off with the Crown Jewels. Try not to do it too often though. Go to the pictures instead. But next time you see your dad, tell him to get a life.

Peter Mullen