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Drink up
Alice Thomas Ellis
Someone has given me an interesting book about women and alcoholism. Thank you, darling. We answered the questionnaire which it contains and my score indicated that I was harming myself and possibly causing suffering to others. Well, I feel all right and it's some time since I attacked anyone in a drunken fury or threw up on their carpet, and I don't leave the kiddies shivering outside the pub, so don't feel too guilty. It goes on to warn that I will experience unpleasant withdraw- al symptoms if I try to give up. I am often forced to give up in the country since the off-licence is miles away and I don't drive (in these circs if you don't drive you can't drink) and I usually experience nothing more than mild annoyance.
On the other hand I once took a child to see a doctor about a verruca. The doctor was bored stiff with the verruca. He looked keenly at me, inquired what was wrong and on hearing that I had sustained a bereave- ment pressed upon me an unsolicited prescription. Being half-witted, I cashed it in and started a course of pills which had to be approached warily — one a day for two days, two a day for three days — that sort of thing. After a week of this I found I could no longer read newsprint, my mouth was dry as a dog biscuit and every time I stood up I fell over. Vodka never did that to me.
Nothing does anything much for grief, but just a little alcohol helps just a little, especially at funerals. A wake would not be the same with everyone standing round, carefully timing his anti-depressants. My friend Alfred, when he was a little lad, went to an Irish wake, got a touch drunk and offered a glass to the person propped up in bed, only to discover that it was the corpse. It gave him a bit of a turn, but then he reasoned that it was fair enough that the principal should be present. It was his funeral after all.
Still, I admit that many of us do drink too much. I was once sitting with some people when it was announced that an actress had died of a drink-related disease. She had drunk half a bottle of brandy a day. There was an appalled silence, broken at last by someone who whispered, 'But that's what we all drink, every day after dinner, when we've drunk everything else.'
Someone I know says women and child- ren don't need to drink because they're drunk already. I don't know quite what he means by this, but agree that children should abstain. People under 18 are unable to make it to the lavatory before they are overwhelmed by nausea. A young visitor was once sick in the telephone. They have incapacitating hangovers and demand bed rest, and they often drink things which the adults had put aside for themselves. The more unscrupulous then fill up the bottles with water. It is embarrassing to find you have poured a guest a measure of Adam's ale from a Smirnoff bottle.
One way of giving up drinking is to stop going to parties. Going to parties and sipping bitter lemon is no good. Watching everyone else getting merry, confidential, abusive, speechless or whichever way it takes them is at once highly revealing and intensely boring. I have worked out a method of not going to parties which causes no offence. You accept the invita- tion and when the evening comes you wash your hair, go to bed early with a good book and wake refreshed and wholesome in the morning. Then you write a thank-you letter on the following lines — 'Darling, a wonderful party. I was sorry to slip away without saying goodbye, but you were getting on so well with that good-looking blonde (or whatever, according to your host's/hostess's predilections) that I felt reluctant to intrude'. If you should wish to be offensive you can add an exclamation mark. The tone of the note depends on what you know of the person who hoped to entertain you. If you don't like him much you could say, 'I do hope you're feeling a little better today' and if you really hate him you could say, 'I don't expect an apology but I feel we would be wise not to meet for some time.' It only works for fairly large parties. I think even the most bibulous of hosts would smell a rat if the occasion had been a dinner party for two.
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