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My life in drinks

LAURENCE LLEWELYN-BOWEN

aware of the fact I was still drunk, and then I had meetings the day after and I was very aware of the fact I was hungover.

I chatted up my wife, Jackie, with the help of Cointreau. We were meant to go on a blind date for two years but it didn’t happen for one reason or another. Finally we were both at the same supper party at a friend’s house in Blackheath. When Jackie arrived, I started flirting in an outrageously cheesy way. There was this awful Cointreau advert at the time, asking whether the warmth of the French Cointreau could melt the ice of the English, and

I may have mentioned it –Iwasabitof a player when I was 19. It worked out well, though. [The couple have been married since 1989 and have two daughters – Cecile, 26, and Hermione, 23.]

If I’m somewhere tropical and holiday-licious, I will order a rum punch or piña colada. But when I’m halfway through, I just think, ‘A gin would be so much better.’ It’s one of the joys of growing old. Twenty years ago, I would have flirted with a dry martini or a screwdriver. Now, there’s a little meter in the back of my mind that says I’ve only got 60,000 gins to go

till death.

The Astor Bar at the St Regis Singapore is absolutely beautiful.

It’s got the most brilliant art. Having a drink in Florence and Venice is amazing too, but it will cost you an arm and a leg. I also have fond memories of the Tropicana club in Havana. The drinks are free, providing you only drink rum with the Cuban version of Coca-cola.

‘I chatted up my wife with the help of Cointreau. It worked out well’

I hate tequila. I had too much of it too quickly when I was at art school. To this day, I can still feel a dry-gagging sensation in my mouth.

I’ve had a £65 measure of whisky. There are moments when a whisky is appropriate – usually when winter kicks in – but I do remember, perversely, being in a lovely resort in Kenya on holiday. The sun was setting on this deck high above the trees and I had to have a glass of whisky. It was incredibly expensive and I don’t remember enjoying it.

We have an icemaker, but it’s switched off because it’s very heavy on electricity. But if it’s a high day or a holiday, the icemaker goes on. I like a cold beverage and shaved ice doesn’t really work. It becomes one with the drink far too quickly.

Every night at six o’clock, we have drinky-poos. My eldest grandson, Albion, who is six, invented it during the pandemic. Every night at six, he would shout: ‘Coo-ee, drinky-poos!’ We thought it highly amusing, and it’s now a family tradition. We all live together [he lives with his two daughters, their husbands and his grandchildren in a 17th-century manor in the Cotswolds], so everyone just turns up on the terrace, or in the main room, and we’ll do a tray with snacks and drinks on it. It’s so lame and civilised – like living in a golf club managed by Agatha Christie.

More More More: Making Maximalism Work in Your Home and Life by Laurence Llewelynbowen is published in hardback by DK, £20*, and as an audiobook

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2022-09-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-09-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

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