Despite, or perhaps because of, his recent health scares, Tony Blair sticks to a strict fitness regime. According to recent newspaper reports, this involves eating plenty of fruit, regular exercise and avoiding alcohol.
As both a journalist and someone who works in politics, professions that both have a reputation for heavy drinking, I should by rights drink twice as much as most people. But, like Tony, I have also been cutting down. And for the same reason - over the past couple of years, I have found that it just isn't possible to sustain the level of drinking one did as a student when you have to get up for work every day - be it running the country or my slightly lesser job of editing the Fabian Review.
So it's a definite sign of maturity and responsibility that, when I did a pre-Christmas stocktake of my alcohol cupboard recently, there were bottles that had been there since the last survey of our supplies - several years ago. This hoarding of alcohol is something that I just wouldn't have understood a few years ago, when any recognisable bottles of booze in my house would be consumed quickly and anything of a lurid colour or without a label would be taken to the next house party and added to the punch.
Included in my hoard were the following: one unopened bottle of vodka (bought in South Africa a year and a half ago), a third of a bottle of Zubrowka Polish vodka (bought in Warsaw nearly a year ago), the dregs of another bottle of vodka (source unknown), an unopened bottle of Pisco (bought by my flatmate in Chile three years ago), dregs of whisky and Stone's green ginger wine from a whisky mac phase, a bottle of Malibu (why? Does anyone older than 16 drink this?), two bottles of Singapore sling mix (a purchase from Singapore airport a couple of years ago), two half-drunk bottles of Bailey's and several miniatures. And then we found the gin - my drink of choice - seven bottles in various sizes and with various amounts left.
That these bottles have been in the house long enough to get a fine coating of dust pleases me somewhat - if I can have seven bottles of gin in my house and not drink them, not to mention the four-year-old bottle of Malibu, then I must be bucking the binge-drinking trend. This is a relief, as, in the run-up to Christmas warnings about alcohol consumption abound, I shall now be able to read such articles without fear.
Perhaps this hoarding is an inherited trait. My grandpa died earlier this year. Sorting through his belongings after his death we found several unopened bottles of alcohol. Some of it dated back to my parents' wedding more than 30 years ago. Some was much older - perhaps taken from his parents' house when they died. This is highly likely - there was a glut of cherry brandy, the drink apparently favoured by my great-grandparents and their generation.
My parents went to a dinner party a few years ago. When offered drinks, my mum asked for a vodka tonic. But once the bottle of vodka was opened, they realised there was a smell coming from the clear liquid. It turned out that the vodka had been drunk several years ago by one of their friends' children, and replaced with water, now stagnant. This was the first time the vodka's owners had gone to drink some since this escapade.
It is of course possible that my flatmate has done the same thing with the seven bottles of gin, and that she has drunk the gin and replaced it cunningly with water. I think that this is unlikely though - we've both noticed that we're drinking less than ever, certainly less than ever since going to university. Nevertheless, such abstinence may well be too late.
I went for dinner with some friends from college recently - one of them revealed they were having liver problems, the other trouble with her kidneys. Neither of them are heavy drinkers, but it did make the rest of us distinctly uneasy. When the waiter came to take our drinks order, we stuck to sparkling water.
