To many right-minded people, taking delivery of a case of wine is up there on the scale of human happiness alongside witnessing the birth of your first child, or going on a team building work day out and seeing your boss lose a game of table tennis to the teenage intern.
Indeed so powerful is the endorphin rush on receiving such a consignment, it is often impossible to resist the urge to sweep your still-eating children's breakfast plates aside, lasso the delivery man into the kitchen and insist that he join you in sampling the first bottle you can liberate from its packaging.
Even if you pass up this early morning test, the feel-good vibe of having a rack full of quality vino will send you happily skipping off to work as if you were The Stone Roses' accountant.
Once there you can daydream to your heart's content about the exciting possibilities ahead - which one shall I pair with tonight's Tofu Surprise? Which one should I keep hold of to impress the soon-to-be-visiting in-laws? Which one shall I use as starting point for this weekend's Lindsay Lohan-inspired molten powerbender?
On your return home, your children's ever more desperate pleas for food and attention fade into the background as you stroke each bottle's slender neck while admiring their classy labels. Tonight there shall be none of that shall-I-go-the-offy nonsense in the ad break of Coronation Street. Now is the time to relax. Now is the time to celebrate great foresight. Now is the time to bring forward the date of the powerbender to tonight!
It is only as these thoughts roll around your head, never letting go, that you begin to realise just how hypnotic is the lure of these twelve alcoholic magnets. Having so much booze in the house simply offers up the sort of mind-melding temptation that would drive even the most disciplined of Buddhist monks to take a sledgehammer to the drinks cupboard door.
This is the fatal flaw in what you thought was your best example of advance preparation since you superglued a pound coin to the school playground floor and sat watching all your classroom enemies go mad trying to dislodge it. Now, watching these bottles dance across the kitchen table before your very eyes, it becomes apparent that nothing constructive will happen in your life until they are all gone, banished, dispatched.
As this enlightening thought dawns, with its joyous marriage of obsession and consumption, you realise there is nothing left to do but steel yourself for the road ahead, call up some nearby pals and get stuck in to polishing the whole lot off. Only then will you be free from the tyranny of the delivered case - free until such a time when you feel strong enough to cross this hallowed threshold once again (next wednesday).