Champagne receptions

The invitation was 7pm at Harvey Nichols for champagne and canapes. 8pm three course dinner with fine wines, followed by a 'Splash of Fashion models showcase', then speaker, then fundraising auction and carriages. Pretty full-on for a Monday night, although it was for charity - the Princess Royal Trust for Carers, if you ask.

But we were meeting at 6.30 at one of those new bar/restaurant/club/boutique hotels that have flourished like mushrooms in the dew on George Street. Where once there were Assurance companies, now there are hotel bars. Interestingly I was guest of an assurance company, in a bar that might once have been its offices.

Dressed to the nines (well, in my favourite black silk wrap dress) and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot chilling on the table, I get the barman to mix me a virgin raspberry mojito. It was lovely. Would be excellent with vodka, or indeed some of the Veuve. Again I explain to my hosts I'd usually be delighted to join in but am on the Lent wagon, and many - for we are eight women in the communications business - have given up something for Lent at some point. One woman there who worked for a law firm said she'd once given up shopping for all but necessities and came out with a tidy sum for her holidays. But that she hasn't done it since.

Now seriously, although I have a pictire of Edina and Patsy on my site and this is the second time in less than 2 weeks I've been to Harvey Nicks this is extraordinary, even for me who in the course of my job has recently been to Gothenburg, Atlanta and once got flown out to Prague for lunch. I do not spend much time at all in Harvey Nichols. But it was a fun night. Although all this fruit-based drink and water - what do teetotallers usually have to go with nice food? And please don't say diet Coke because if you suggest that you don't know what I mean.

Now I've long given up the idea that it's a terrible waste to leave a half a pint of beer if you don't fancy it, or have to leave. When I was young and broke of course it was a travesty. But say what you like about HN, the wine on the tables was impressive - the red was in fact a Crozes Hermitage (which if you refer back to my first post..) albeit a 2004. I felt a bit mixed about leaving a full uncorked bottle untouched. Nevermind. Of the 90 or so guests I counted at least 5 or 6 multi-millionaires of my acquaintance. Perhaps that is what multi-millionaires do.

After, I did go back with my hosts to the bar we started in. They ordered another bottle of Veuve and me another fruit-based drink (for the lady, thanks Al Murray). Clicquot surely knew it was worth it to sponsor those awards for women in business. It really is the bottle to buy women at about the £25/£30 mark (or if you're drinking on George Street in Edinburgh, £40).

My host had enjoyed the evening's libations - she had more than 2 to 3 units, to say the least. I looked her in her bleary blue eye. She got a bit emotional about a mutual friend whose wife had died, spilled a bit of champagne on her front, joked loudly about how she should go back up to a schoolmate at the bar who had been rude to her and give him what for. Then we both left in a taxi at about 11.45. I was her, not too long ago.