Not pregnant

I like to celebrate Chinese New Year with a group from Hong Kong I met a few years ago - Kung Hei Fat Choi, Year of the Golden Pig! This was my third year. It's nothing major, no dragon parades or anything - just a reception, wine and canapés, a speech by an envoy from HK, plus you receive some sort of Chinese knick knacks (or tat, as my husband would call them). But I'm fond of them, for some reason - I've had a little stone carving of the year's animal suspended on a red beaded string on my monitor at work now for ages.

The trio of chaps who run the event come up from London each year and each year I end up talking rot over drinks with them. We were in the Corinthian, a Glasgow bar and restaurant in a magnificently florid Victorian bank building. This time of course, I stuck with the ginger ale. I chatted to a few new faces and when it came to saying hello to the organisers, the difference between my sobriety and their lack of it was charming. Explaining why I wasn't having a glass of red brought up an interesting insight into the family life of one of my hosts - long story, won't relate it here. Suffice to say he was preparing to go back to HK and probably won't be seeing his 13-year-old son for a wee while. Drinking does encourage people to speak more intimately with others they may only socialise briefly with once a year. More than if they weren't. And that can be a good thing, unless of course you tell too much…

I didn't however get any work done on the train back. Rather than being tipsy I just felt lazy and tired. Think I was in bed by 10.30pm.

It was the Rugby match on Saturday where it would have been nice to have a drink. It wasn't just that my father-in-law, who came up for the weekend, was so gobsmacked I wasn't having a pint, or a whisky or a glass of wine. In fact he kept 'forgetting' and asking me why I wasn't. Lunch, too, in the Scotch Malt Whisky Society on the Friday was amusing, if only for the compassionate way which the nice young waiter took my order for fizzy water, while my husband and his dad had a dram or two. Either he thought I was pregnant or a recovering dipsomaniac.

It would have been nice to have a pint at the pub before we went to Murrayfield Stadium for Ireland vs Scotland (Scotland lost 19-18. It was a cliffhanger all the way through). And it would have been nice to have a glass of Chianti at that great little Italian we had dinner at later. But nevermind.

A press release came through today: A dark little local wine bar, in launching a new cocktail list, is giving away bottles of champagne on the hour every Thursday night through April. They do good seafood too. I think I've decided where I'll go to break my fast!