“Mummy’s Special Lemonade,” on the other hand, is a much different beast. It’s a gin and tonic with a massive wedge of lemon.
According to a BBC Newsround report last week, 70 percent of children have seen their parents drunk—and, of these, 46 percent don’t think their parents should ever drink in front of them.
Before we go any further, let’s just tackle the obvious yet necessary points: if we’re talking about parents who go completely woo-hoo/Bill Sykes on the sauce; or who are only getting through half the school drop-off before sitting down in the middle of the road, puncturing a Gaz canister with their keys and sucking out the contents with a “special” straw, then guys, you need help. I am not interested in “partying” with you. If you come round my house with a bottle of peach Schnapps, I will hide in the coat closet, while phoning in a perfect description of you to Social Services. You are not my good-time bredren. Consider yourself eschewed and betrayed by me.
Everyone else, however, is welcome to join with me in faintly piqued incredulity at the children of today. WHAT MORE do they WANT from us? Don’t they KNOW how this system WORKS? Mummies and daddies have to drink lots of wine down in one go on Friday night—because the schedule doesn’t allow it the rest of the week. It’s called TIME MANAGEMENT. If I don’t drink a whole bottle of wine on Party Night, I probably wouldn’t get time to drink at all—and that, obviously, would be ridiculous. Parents drinking is the reason you came into the world, and if we didn’t keep doing it, then by God, it would be the reason you went back out of it.
This is one of those many occasions where adult reason must overrule the ill-thought-out utterances of the young and stupid. You don’t want us to drink in front of you? Where, pray, are we supposed to drink? Obviously we’d like to go to the pub—we’d like to go to Harry’s Bar in Venice, in 1951—but we can’t, because we’re looking after you. And, I might add, looking after you in the best possible way: has mummy ever been more entertaining than when she stood on the patio table, opening and closing the big parasol, and singing “You Know I’m No Good” by Amy Winehouse? Or when she had a little “wine nap” at the bottom of the garden, and Uncle Eddie and Uncle Jimmy wrote “BALLS” on her forehead in magic marker, and you got to color in her nose and ears blue? If CLOWNS were doing this in a CIRCUS you’d think it was hilarious. And, let’s face it, it’s the only time mummy can be half-way bothered to play Super Mario Kart with you.
But by the skewiff logic of the younglings, my father had a better attitude to drinking—in that we never actually saw him drink. Instead, we’d be left outside the Red Lion in a Datsun, engine running so that Radio One could entertain us. As we howled along to “Take On Me” by A-ha, Dad would occasionally reel out of the saloon bar door, push a packet of potato chips through the crack in the window—saying, “Remember you’re a Womble” (for a detailed explanation of what a Womble is, please see my first book, How to Be a Woman, page 179)—before going back into the pub again.
Three hours later, he’d suddenly come bombing out holding something incongrous like a fish tank, hissing, “It’s all gone a bit serious in there,” and pulling away from the curb at 60mph. Then he’d pass out on the hall floor, and we’d rinse his pockets for spare change.
Was he ultimately the better parent? The fact that I once watched him throw two liters of petrol onto a bonfire—“Because The Two Ronnies is on in ten minutes”— thus setting fire to our garden fence, means that I can answer this, frankly, “No.”
But we are, at least, of accord on the issue of parental drunkenness. Look, man. I don’t do fox hunting, diamond collecting, spa weekends, or that much nitrous oxide anymore. My leisure time has to operate within the boundaries of being conducted a) within forty feet of my children; b) between the hours of 6 PM and 1 AM, Fridays only; and c) costing no more than £30. Therefore, I like to get a very, very cheap bottle of supermarket whisky—the kind that, when you drink it, turns you into a pirate: closing one eye and shouting “ARGH!”—sit down with a couple of chatty people, and get a bit toasted.
If you’re of joyous mind, that kind of drinking is like a long weekend—as exhilarating an experience as spending three days sightseeing in Rome, or walking Scafell Pike. You’ll have imperially wiggy conversations, solve the world’s problems three times over, spontaneously remember all the lyrics to “I Don’t Know How To Love Him” from Jesus Christ Superstar, and wake up in the morning feeling oddly cleansed, and cheerful.
And if the kids don’t like it? Darlings, you talk this much nonsense, and fall down the stairs that dramatically, every day of the week. You haven’t got a leg to stand on.