I'm still a teenage soda junkie

In all our travels around the world, I have very few regrets about the places I've been. But one major one is that when we went to New Orleans for four days, I only discovered the Rocket Fizz pop and candy store on the final afternoon.

It was everything I always dreamed about on all my travels - a living museum to the carbonated beverage, with all sorts of flavours to try out. I got a six pack of sodas with chocolate and bacon flavourings. I even got a bubble gum flavour one and I hate bubble-gum flavour, but it had a They Live label, so I had to get it.

It's my one real vice in life these days, a love of soft drinks. I only drink booze at funerals and haven't smoked since I was 22. I don't drink coffee or tea or any kind of hot drink, really, and will take the sugar and caffeine hit where I can get it.

There's nothing wrong with a cold Cola-Cola, but I always like the crazy flavours and usually regret getting them and wish I'd got a coke instead, but at least I tried.

And the flavours can linger for years, when I find a local shop selling the Fanta with the Fruit Twist flavour, I have to get it, because it always tastes of central London to me, and I ain't getting back to London anytime soon, so I'll take what I can get.

The absolute worst soda I ever had overseas was some kind of sour green apple thing we tried when we passed through Pisa, in the shadow of the leaning tower. It was rancid. The best was probably the combined effect of the creaming sodas I drank while visiting the northwestern parts of the US, which made me a creaming soda fan for life.

I don't go for any diet soda, because it always feel like the aspartame is sticking to my soul. 

Back home, in everyday life, I have had some issues. I used to go through litres of the stuff when I was younger, even the threat of getting fillings from the school dental nurse wasn't enough to slow me down. (And it really was a fucking threat - I don't think local schools have in-house dental nurses anymore, but there were legitimate reasons why we always called it the murder house.)

I've weaned myself off the soft drinks several times, (and saw some slightly impressive weight loss every time I did), but now I'm a stay at home dad for most of the week, and need some kind of soda hit to get through the day. I'll take my vices where I can get 'em.

And sometimes I'll just think about that soda store in New Orleans, and how much I'd like to get back there. I ate some of the best food in my life in that city when we visited, but I could have drunk way more.