There is only one way to learn these things...
And that's the hard way. This post reminded me of the way I learnt never to mix wines...
It was a wet July day, and I was off to London for a forum meetup in Hyde Park. I'd met several people from there already but most of them I hadn't. I'm socially awkward enough as it is without people going off into their own little cliques around me, so I had an excellent plan to help make me a little more sociable.

Once I get there, off we trot to Somerfield, where I decide that cheap white wine is the order of the day. First mistake. It tastes like nothing so much as vinegar, but I already knew it got me very, very drunk, so down the throat it goes, fast enough to bypass the taste buds.

Nasty, nasty brightly coloured shots (£3ish for 8)? Don't mind if I do.

Evening comes and I feel no better. Lots of other people clear off to go to the hostel where they were staying, but a few of us stay and sit in a circle. I stayed, because I'd booked on the overnight coach home. Empty cake packets, bags, CDs, empty cans, etc are cleared away, but a half-bottle of red wine is left in the grass. I spy this and lay straight into it, once I've asked everyone if it's theirs. The entire bottle of white wine means it goes down far, far too easily.

Smashed glasses, being propped up by people I'd never met before that day, accidentally wandering (alone) onto Oxford Street, losing a tenner on the tube and a wasted journey to Whitechapel and back later, come midnight I'm sat with no shoes, on the leaking coach toilet, other people's piss swilling about my feet, pissing out of one end and being sick into the sink from the other.

I have never drunk wine to get drunk since that day.
(and now for someone completely different, Sat 29 Dec 2007, 18:53, Reply)