I’VE had today circled in my mental calendar for the last month.

No, it’s not because I’m excited about the start of autumn, or the fact that it’s Ruud Gullit’s 48th birthday today.

Rather, I’ve been looking forward to September 1 because it marks the end of my self-imposed month without alcohol.

I’ll mark the milestone tonight with a few pints of real ale, which I have no doubt will taste all the sweeter for the wait.

Since my teens I’ve been a fairly enthusiastic imbiber – not often the most drunk person in the pub, but rarely the most sober either.

I don’t drink every day, indeed I tend not to partake at all during the week.

But I do like a drink at the weekend and there are many occasions – dinners out, meeting friends – which just don’t seem right without a glass in hand.

Like too many of us, I’ve had some embarrassing moments because of the booze, but strangely that isn’t what prompted me to stop for a month.

In fact it was the opposite.

Back in July I went out in Grange Moor one night and, over the course of the evening, I must have had 10 drinks.

Yet I never did or said anything stupid. And when I woke up the following morning, I felt fine.

OK, I wasn’t ready to run a marathon, but I wasn’t hungover either.

And that’s when it hit me. I had drunk my weekly allocation of 21 units in a single sitting – and felt none the worse for it.

I suddenly realised that my body had become too much of an expert at breaking down alcohol. It was time to break the pattern.

August presented many temptations to give in to the demon drink.

The month kicked off with a trip to Oakwell Hall for Yorkshire Day celebrations. The Yorkshire puds were nice and Shepley Band sounded good in the sunshine.

But a pint of Timothy Taylor’s would have rounded off the afternoon nicely.

After a few days off the sauce, my girlfriend Jenny suggested I try some alcohol-free beer to take the edge off the urges.

Now, this may seem like a joke, but I honestly didn’t realise there was such a thing as no-alcohol beer.

I remember Billy Connolly doing an ad for Kaliber in the 1980s where he looked up at a massive pint of the booze-free beer and assured us we could “drink as much as you like”.

But I had assumed that the company had long since gone bust. I mean, who would buy beer without alcohol?

Yet, I discovered that Kaliber is alive and kicking, as are several other beer-free beers. In the dusty corner of a pub fridge or a neglected supermarket aisle, you can buy lager without alcohol.

After shopping around, I settled on Beck’s Blue, which smells OK and tastes acceptable.

But there’s no two ways about it, booze-free beer is not the real thing; it doesn’t give you that tingle that alcohol does.

Armed with my Beck’s Blues I struggled on soberly through birthday parties, dinners out and Emley Show.

Hardest of all was the weekend we spent in the Peak District in the middle of the month.

Edale is a beautiful village with wonderful walks. But, once the sun goes down, what’s there to do but have a few pints?

And now, after 31 days, I’ve made it to the end.

The sad thing is that I feel a real sense of achievement to have gone without alcohol for a month.

That probably says more than anything else.

It would be good to say that I’ve changed, that I’ve learnt something from my month of sobriety.

But I’m pretty sure I’ll be back to my old ways soon enough.