Drunk for a Penny, Dead Drunk for Tuppence

I feel a little... disorientated today. Yes, that's the word.

A certain degree of cerebral fuzziness, a slight shake to the hands, an oddly haunted expression in my unguarded moments...it all points to one thing:

GIN

Yes, gentle reader, I am afraid that I spent yesterday evening in a Gin Palace in Victoria. It is a sordid tale and the unhappy circumstances in which I find myself today (the blame for which I lay squarely at the feet of Uncle Mac) are the result of imbibing the Devil's Buttermilk.

And to think I was brought to this state by a Whitehall mandarin! For a pillar of the establishment (which he undoubtedly is) the old rogue is a shocking bad influence.

Nevertheless, I think we could have kept the lid on things were it not for an event which has never, ever, in all my years of haunting the tap rooms and Gin Palaces of London, occured to me before: We were provided with drinks on the house by the manager.

The cause was a bit of minor irritation by another customer. The manager clearly measured us all against Uncle Mac's august standard and felt we were likely to be aggrieved. He failed to understand that I count it a quiet evening if no-one sustains a flesh wound during the course of events. But be that as it may, free drinks appeared (as if by magic) before us.

I have no idea what the unwholesome fluid provided actually was. But it was free and we drank it with gratitude - hastily, lest it turn out to be a terrible mistake. The consensus amongst my companions was that it was some primitive form of Gin, perhaps an early ancestor of the sublime Tanqueray that we were imbibing. My highly-trained palate discerned saccharine, rubbing alcohol and (possibly) pickled onions, before shutting down in horror.

And it was at that point we all agreed that it would be a splendid idea to have more Tanqueray. The result? Bonhomie, badinage and unfettered levity. Thank goodness, no-one went so far as to loosen their tie - but one can see how that sort of thing might happen.

But of course there is a price to be paid for the fleeting moments of joy in our otherwise meaningless lives. Rueful indeed have been the emails circulating this morning. Suffice to say that, whilst we managed not to breach the Golden Rule (Never have more than six double gins in any two and a half hour period), it was a damned close run thing.

Let that be a lesson to us all