Why is it that opting for a non-alcoholic beverage in this town automatically downgrades your options to something deeply unsexy?
While my fellow drinkers are delicately holding the stem of a wine glass, I'm left clutching a wet, tall glass and pursing my lips around a straw like an eager 6-year-old at a birthday party. Oh, and in the glass is invariably something coloured and fizzy, so cluttered with ice that unless one slurps at speed, it soon turns to overpriced water.
At functions I've given up asking for my sparkling water to be served without a straw, in a wine glass, such is the confusion which ensues. But I've also stopped lying that I'm doing FebFast or dry July or sober Sunday or any of the other silly fads.
Instead I tell the truth; it's lunchtime, I'm working, I plan to drive, I don't feel like drinking today or I'm simply feeling cheap. Call me crazy, but it's a fact, I just don't drink as much as I used to.
So I've stopped making excuses, now could someone tell the bars and restaurants to stop serving inelegant excuses for drinks just because they don't include a splash of booze in them?
