A Votre Santé!

Our friends V and R have given up alcohol for six weeks.  Completely!  The most I have managed during my adult life-time has been a week and the odd day when a virus had me nailed to the bed and I was unable to get down to the kitchen.  And although I felt incredibly virtuous, mealtimes just weren’t the same and just didn’t satisfy as much.  Thus a whole six weeks without sneaky illicit swigs of the altar wine is unimaginable (to me).

The French don’t consider wine as alcohol so they have cannily eradicated any drink-related problems out of their lives and the Swiss have wine drinking/growing/making so ensconced in their culture that bottles are opened at every possible occasion.  I know Duncan, posh neighbour, doesn’t consider champagne as alcohol as it is “celebratory”.  I’m with him on that one, just as birthday cake doesn’t have any calories in it either.  

So you see what knots we adults get ourselves into to fool ourselves that we are capable of NOT drinking.

Thus when we were invited over to V and R’s for dinner recently I immediately wailed But you are NOT drinking! Do I have to NOT drink as well?  I was assured I could drink whatever I wanted but on the way over to their village in France on the Swiss border Mr. Jules and I decided that it was ridiculous to fear an evening without alcohol and that we would be supportive and stick to whatever they were (not) drinking.  And we had, as usual a great time, less silliness mind you but it was a lovely evening.  So lovely in fact and so wide awake were we at 11.30pm that R suggested we all go into the garden and do a spot of DIY to burn off some energy and make use of all those firing synapses.  He was thinking along the lines of a new space shuttle or perhaps one of those Hubble telescopes.

There is a terrible downside to NOT drinking rarely spoken of. Not sleeping.  So used are we to falling comatosed into bed, after a jolly night out, that Mr. Jules and I lay awake for hours, bottles and bottles of Perrier water slucing their merry way around our bodies doing years of much needed dredging and deep-cleansing. 

By chance we had an invitation the next evening to friends of ours who don’t drink at all – in fact it is rather frowned upon – but this time I didn’t defiantly take along my own bottle of wine instead I bravely held out a second night.  Sunday morning I was expecting to wake up luminescent à la Nicole Kidman or Gwyneth, a pale shimmering aura of glowing light reflecting back at me from the bathroom mirror but alas it was only flat-haired, greasy old me.  Mr. Jules groggily claimed to feel worse than ever but rescue was at hand because that day we had a celebratory lunch at Duncan and Candy’s to welcome new baby Phoebe to the world and after five hours of steady intake: champagne, red wine, cognac and a cigar he felt heaps better.

I do think the best approach to drinking is the European way, little but often, very often.  Think of an IV bag of wine hooked up to your arm and a lovely constant drip, drip.

Copyright Jules Ritter April 2008