When I decided to go ‘ dry’
Like half of London, I gave the New Year a surly greeting. It was time to diet. There are two sorts of diets. First, the ones that may work for girls. Breakfast, part of a lettuce leaf. Lunch, the leftovers from breakfast. Supper, some cottage cheese with watercress. Second, boys’ diets, which all concentrate on avoiding carbohydrate. That is not easy. We all enjoy sinking our gnashers in a warm bread roll, liberally buttered, and good pasta is a culinary glory. That said, il faut souffrir pour être beau ( must suffer to be beautiful) — and at least with a highprotein diet you can have something to eat.
There is a downside. The boys’ regimes all involve cutting out grog, at least for a penitential mini- Lent. By boxing and coxing between Atkins and Dukan, choosing from each at his most permissive, I decided that 10 drinkless days could suffice. ( Dukan is an encouraging fellow, whose text is full of military metaphors. The Frogs could have done with him in 1940.)
I persevered and only found one difficulty, which relates to the theory of evolution. The sceptics will argue that if the evolutionists were right, pussycats would have worked out how to open the fridge door. I had a relevant experience. At a table with a bottle of red wine, my right arm would stretch across to it, unbidden, as if it had learnt to evolve — and then had to be called to order by the nervous system’s high command. I imagine that a lot of Krauts had a similar problem after the war. At public gatherings, their right arm would leap aloft until the left arm restrained it.
Then I fell. It was a dinner party, on the eighth dry day. On arrival, I confessed that I was off booze, and even declined a glass of champagne, to my hosts’ amazement. They said that we were drinking chablis followed by St Joseph. “Get thee behind me, Satan,” was my staunch reply. The husband added, wistfully, that some of it would keep for tomorrow. His tone stimulated me to inquire what exactly would keep for the morrow. He told me that he had sent most of an uncle’s cellar to auction, to turn into school fees, which are the curse of today’s drinking classes. The amount of good stuff, which is now being exported to Hong Kong and Beijing in order to pay for education, is a testimony to the squirearchy’s selflessness. But the auctioneers had been discouraging about various oddments, including a bottle of ’ 55 port, Taylor’s no less. They would sell it if he insisted, but an odd bottle would not command much of a price. So he kept it and had decanted it, in expectation of my presence.
What could one say? After all, modern churchmen no doubt deplore this anti- Satan stuff. It smacks of horn- ism and tail- ism, perhaps even of racism, and Hell is probably no more than a run- down inner- city housing estate, still suffering from Thatcher’s cuts. Equally, it would be wrong to drink the port on an empty stomach. So I reconciled myself to the white and the red ( was there any of the champagne left?).
The port was as good as it should have been. A lot went wrong in Britain during the Seventies and Eighties, not least the premature drinking of vintage port. In clubs, the ’ 55s were being thrust into action while still in their juvescence, to fill the gaps in the frontline caused by the exhaustion of the ’ 45s. So the ’ 55s ran out before they were fully ready, to be succeeded by the equally premature ’ 63s. Thus it went on, to the ’ 77s, which have mostly been drunk before they were in their prime. To judge by that bottle, the Taylor’s ’ 55 is now at its peak. Within five years, it may begin a slow and gentle descent. But it is a very high peak. A rich and sonorous wine, it put the chablis and St Joseph in their context. Nothing the matter with either, yet there is a heirarchy — and, I’m certain, there will always be another opportunity to diet.
The Taylor’s ’ 55 is now at its peak. Within five years, it may begin a slow and gentle descent. A rich and sonorous wine, it put the chablis and St Joseph in their context.