Last night I had a Kafkaesque experience. Entering Charing Cross Tube from the Strand, I descended to its bowels only to find the Jubilee Line was missing. I checked the Northern and Bakerloo platforms for a sign. Nothing. Confused, I returned to the concourse, searching behind ticket machines for boarded-up walkways. Nothing. Back on the street, I entered the station via Trafalgar Square. It brought me to the same place. I went through the whole charade again, finally stopping at the foot of the escalators where I stood vacantly like a callgirl's twat for some time. As any Londoner will tell you, the Jubilee doesn't go to Charing Cross, and my amnesia was a function of alcohol consumption. Tellingly, today's papers claim single mothers consume more alcohol than their married peers. This has a ring of truth, but last night's drinking was unconnected to the stresses of parenting as my genius progeny had gone for the weekend with their father. Nor was it connected to cocktails in dubious nightclubs while being louche. No: what exacerbated my intake was four hours of dull though not uninteresting round-table chitter-chat: email overload, inheritance tax, Sion Jenkins, Tuscany, squarials, and Donald Where's Me Troosers - that's my fat arse in the muddy troosers after an accident in Laos. The mention of Donald and his troosers - another gift from my elderly neighbour - led to the single moment of joy when the boys broke into song. During these proceedings, the host kept pouring the Rioja and I kept drinking. A big mistake... I once went to a Thanksgiving Dinner in County Kilburn where a guest drank a glass of rough Spanish and keeled over into his turkey not once, but twice. That night, I had fearful and vivid dreams - Marquez, not Kafka. I have since avoided Spanish wine. Until last night. This time I swear I'll never drink it again. Funnily enough, the only one on water was the married woman at our table. Because she was designated driver. And there, at it's most simple, is the reason why married women drink less;-) Today, after lunch with a dear pal who's going crazy at the surfeit of responsibility and shortfall in fun that comes from having an ill husband, I'm hotfooting it to Suffolk for a friend's 50th. For her man's birthday, she bought him an old punt. Let's hope it's sunny tomorrow so we can go down river:-)