Wine into Water

A couple of weeks ago, we went to a dinner party at a friends' house. They have an 18 year old son, Matteo, an intelligent and mature chap who also joined us for dinner, along with another couple and their children, a boy of 13 and a girl of 10 years old. It was a lovely meal, lovingly prepared by Paola who is a great cook and was composed of the usual four course affair which I can now cope with by leaving half of everything on my plate, much though it pains me...

We started the dinner with a glass of prosecco. Then there was a bottle of wine. For seven adults. For the whole of the dinner, which effectively meant most of the evening. I found myself nervously glancing around as the single bottle got lower and lower, eking out a couple of drops at a time so that I wouldn't be left totally bereft of booze. I have to say it was a lovely evening, everyone was chatting and as is typical at a dinner with Italians, often all at once. It wasn't by any stretch a subdued affair. At the end of dinner, Paola served dessert and brought out a bottle of frozen crema di limoncello, a creamy lemon liqueur which is delicious but so sweet it was impossible to drink more than a couple of sips. The parents of the younger children offered them a drink, both accepted but without the hint of forbidden fruit which often accompanies such a gesture with British kids.

I write this this morning after just having my habitual morning scan through The Sun online (what can I say? There is no defence...) and seeing a photo of a young girl in some street-lamp lit high street in Britain somewhere, in a skimpy dress, arms waving in the air, and with her underwear round her ankles. It really brought home the differences in our two cultures, and is something I have been thinking about recently as my 17 year old niece recounts tales of her terrible hangovers in Facebook. In a book called 'Watching the English' by Kate English (what are the chances?), the author notes that the staggering belligerence that often happens with British drunks is a phenomena rarely seen in other cultures - that it appears that we have conditioned ourselves to behave in a rowdy, leery, often aggressive manner more because that is what we believe the effects of alcohol should be rather than their true effects. Younger and younger children think that going out and getting hammered is the norm. I am feeling like a pot calling a kettle black, of course and from here in my glass house, I am in great danger of getting more than a few panes broken. However, my 'Fortieth Birthday Epiphany' has made me look back and see my years and years of, truthfully, heavy drinking as totally unnecessary and actually rather tragically wasteful. At the time I thought I was having a ball, going out nearly every night after work with friends and not going home until the bottle of wine was finished, or the cocktails downed. It was fun, but there was no sense of proportion.

I believe that this is what we are missing. Towards the end of the dinner with Paola and Gianfranco, Matteo leaned over to take the limoncello from his father. Gianfranco turned to Paola and said, 'you know, he's had nearly four [small] glasses of wine - without any water - this evening!' Her horrified face said it all. That was not the way for young people to drink at the dinner table. The younger children tried the limoncello with little comment and their parents barely gave them a second glance. This is the way to bring children up to have respect for alcohol and to see it as merely part of a whole. It is a nice accompaniment with dinner or a couple of 'drinks' as long drinks, e.g. gin and tonic are called here, with friends over a loud conversation on an evening out.

The few times we go out to our local 'cocktail bar', there will be groups of up to 10 - 15 younger people, 16 - 25 years old maybe, and it is not unusual for some of them to be drinking alcohol while others have a tea or coffee, or often, an ice-cream, instead. They are just as loud and raucous as a group of English kids out for an evening together, but there is no desperate need to get drunk with these kids, they are just having a good time with their friends and that is sufficient. Maybe because the Italians already have the innate lack of self-consciousness that English people have, they have no need for alcohol to take away their inhibitions. In my opinion, most Italians have few enough inhibitions in public as it is, thank you very much.

This is one lesson I hope my children do learn from growing up in Italy. To have a sense of proportion and control over alcohol and to realise that, honestly, getting blind drunk all the time isn't that great. It really ain't big and it ain't clever. It has taken me many many years to reach this point and for this I know I deserve the label of hypocrite, however I have finally managed to save alcohol for occasions when I can enjoy it and hopefully enjoy it with far more moderation than I used to. And with any luck, my kids will grow up to do what their mother says and not what their mother did...