Alice Wyllie: 'I've found there is nowhere more difficult to turn down a drink than Scotland'

Published on Saturday 13 March 2010 19:32

'RED or white?" It's a simple question, but one to which I always answer "neither". Yet my response to that particular question rarely provokes a simple reaction. Or at least it rarely provokes the appropriate reaction, which is no reaction at all.

Yes, I'm Alice and – like Friedrich Nietzsche, Adolf Hitler and Marie Antoinette before me – I'm a teetotaller. There's no dramatic reason behind my decision to abstain from the giggle juice, but I've found there's nowhere more difficult to turn down a drink than Scotland.

I was reminded of this again last week when I dined with colleagues in one of Edinburgh's most prominent restaurants. The waiter made his way around our table, a bottle of white in one hand and red in the other. As he reached me I politely declined, but as I returned to my conversation, he interrupted with what I imagine he deemed a charmingly cheeky chuckle: "What, are you the designated driver?" It was asked with a scoff.

I resisted the urge to lob my amuse-bouche at him. It's not the first – nor the worst – of the reactions I've encountered when I've turned down a drink. One waiter asked if I was on medication; another joked that I must be a recovering alcoholic. I lied and told him I was, and thoroughly enjoyed watching him squirm. Yet another suggested that you shouldn't trust a teetotal journalist. I told him that he'd be advised not to trust any journalist, sober or otherwise.

Frustratingly, no-one respects my choice less than my closest friends. I've scolded a particular pal repeatedly for accusing me of being boring for turning down alcohol. The same friend once vomited on me after a night on the sauce. Others will urge me to give in to temptation, not understanding that, far from being tempted by alcohol, I'm repelled by it.

Of course, the main peril of teetotalism is being sober in a room full of drunk people. Suddenly your boss is trying to dance with you, your relative is revealing secrets you'd have preferred they kept to themselves and your friend is, well, vomiting on you. But more subtle than that is the sense of exclusion that comes with being surrounded by a group of people who, thanks to chemical alteration, are collectively finding the pattern on the carpet eye-wateringly hilarious.

Waiters may irk me, friends may try to wear me down and bar staff may scoff, but of all the reactions to my abstinence, the one that irritated me most was when my then-boss tried to pour me a glass of wine at a work event. When I declined, he raised a disapproving, sozzled eyebrow and just big fat did it anyway.

I considered it the perfect opportunity to test my theory that everyone should throw a drink in someone's face once in their life, particularly since, by the state of him, I figured he wouldn't remember it the next morning. I didn't, of course, but he took care of that for me, spilling an entire glass of red wine down his white shirt before the end of the evening.

He should, I thought, really have answered "white" when asked that very simple question at the beginning of the night. Or better yet, "neither".