DRINK PROBLEM

Apparently I don't drink enough. Now if you'd seen me last Saturday night after I'd consumed the best part of two bottles of Merlot unaided, you would question this statement. However, here I am being literal. I do not consume enough fluid.

How do I know this? Because I am blessed to have people around me who care about the state of my health and who regularly nag me about it. Recently, the nagging with regards to my failure to quaff several litres of water per day has come from at least three different people and so in order to attempt to silence my critics, I have succumbed.

I know that going everywhere with a plastic bottle of water clutched in your hand has almost become a fashion statement but I am clearly not in the vanguard of fashion where drinking is concerned. I simply try desperately to remember to drink a glass or two - sometimes instead of my beloved coffee. There I've said it. You now realise how serious an issue this is for me.

Once again I turn to my late grandfather for help and he duly obliges with this poem which I believe to have been penned by him.

"Pure water is the best of drinks

that man to man can bring.

But who am I that I should have

the best of everything?

Let Princes revel at the pump,

Peers with the pond make free -

But whisky, wine or even beer

Are good enough for me."