I like wine.
Fact.
I don’t have a problem with wine. I don’t over indulge. I don’t drink till I pass out. My first waking thought isn’t for a glass of the pink stuff and I refuse to make any form of apology for liking it.
I do not like Chardonnay. I find it oily, heavy and a little too oaky for my taste.
My tipple of choice is rosé. A nice cold glass of rosé on a Sunday evening is something to be treasured.
My days of partying till 4am on a Friday and/or Saturday night are long behind me. I’m at ease with the fact that I’m not 22 and that I can no longer pull a weekend long bender, you know, the kind where by 11pm I’ve lost all sense of what I’ve been drinking and can barely stand!
I am a 31 year old mum. My weekends consist of cooking breakfast, housework, ironing and other such chores. To go out on an evening and crawl home to bed at 4am would probably kill me. Or at least that’s how I’d feel in the morning.
My head and my body are no longer equipped to deal with the hangovers that mixing my drinks present. More to the point I no longer have the stamina to do it!
I do wonder sometimes how my liver coped with everything I threw at it when I was younger: cider, beer, lager, wine, spirits and florescent coloured shots with names I can’t pronounce!
I think I appreciate alcohol more now. Instead of rating drink by how drunk it gets me, I rate it on how nice it tastes. Or how it compliments my food.
Yet I still feel a small pang of guilt when I go to the supermarket and buy a bottle. I feel especially guilty when I have my daughter in tow. I can see how the cashier looks at me. I can almost hear her thinking: ‘hmph. A bottle of wine? And with your daughter in plain view? Who drinks in front of their child? Call yourself a parent?’
I’m almost overcome with the urge to apologise. I want to explain myself but realise statements like ’Christ, I can’t remember the last time I had a drink’ or ‘it’s been a rough week’ and ‘Just need to unwind’ all make me sound like some raving binge drinker or someone who drinks to forget. Which I’m not. I just like how it tastes.
So no. I wont apologise for having a drink.
I’m mature. I’m responsible.
I wonder when I’ll get my telegram that welcomes me to adulthood?
