To spare my summertime blushes, I’m off the sauce

After one summer party too many, I have sworn off the demon drink. I blame the heat. Half a bottle of rosé slips down like squash, especially when you are waiting for the barbecue “to get hot enough”, and on an empty stomach, too. Prosecco, meanwhile, is the fastest route to Squiffsville, or is that just me? The England matches, when I used alcohol as an anaesthetic, didn’t help.

The trouble is you drink more because you’re dehydrated and the alcohol dehydrates you. Plus, I have an embarrassingly weak head. Proof positive that I needed to stop come the weekend when we went to a lovely do in the garden at the house of friends. I accepted the strawberry bellini I was offered on arrival (rude not to) and gulped down its successor due to thirst. At some point I had first one, then perhaps a second glass of white wine. I thought I was pretty merry, no worse, we went home in a taxi and, the next morning, I greeted Himself cheerfully at breakfast.

“Do you remember anything about last night?,” he asked carefully.

“It was great,” I said, then, suddenly suspicious: “What did I do?”

“You gave the driver instructions all the way home.”

“What’s wrong with telling the cab driver where we live?”

“Nothing at all. But we weren’t in a cab, darling. I was driving our car and you got in the back. To be fair, your directions were excellent. I particularly enjoyed you yelling at me to turn right into my own drive.”

Oh, Lord. So that’s me on the wagon and in disgrace. Fortunately, someone on Twitter recommended Seedlip, a non-alcoholic spirit. With tonic, lime and a lot of crushed ice, it does a very nifty impersonation of a G&T. It certainly has the same medicinal sting, although it doesn’t make the world delightfully blurry at the edges. I’m sticking with it, though. At least for as long as it takes the children to stop cracking up and crying with laughter over The Night Mum Was So Pickled She Thought Daddy Was a Cab Driver.

Twenty years should do it.