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and bizarre things like anchovies, all proffered by attractive, enthusiastic young men in tight trousers.
    I was experiencing, at no charge, my very first stand-up finger buffet!
    The scene, however, lacked the gentility normally associated with such events. Unself-consciously and ungratefully, we plebs crammed handful after handful of exotic morselsinto our mouths without any regard for the provenance thereof. It was more like feeding time at London Zoo.
    Eventually we reached satiation point. Stuffed to the gills, we staggered off in the direction of the kitchen appliances, little knowing that our lives were about to change forever.
    Nestling in between the chip fryers, cheese cutters, and ice cream makers, we discovered a whole booth dedicated to amateur winemaking. For some reason my parents seemed a lot more interested in this than in the pasta makers or the Chinese noodle-frying kits, or even the free snacks!
    Before you could say “cirrhosis of the liver,” my dad was forking over some cash.
    Within days of returning home, Terry Rothschild Lafite Doonan had gone into production.
    It’s no exaggeration to say that my parents went completely berserk. They filled every single inch of our house with vats and vats of gurgling, fermenting wine, jugs and buckets and flagons of it. Every time you opened a cupboard, you were confronted by some aspect of the winemaking process. The stench of yeasty fermentation, along with the sound of drunken laughter, is among the most the abiding memories of my childhood.
    Occasionally there were leaks and disasters. A vat of homemade black currant vin rouge exploded in the attic right next to blind Aunt Phyllis’s room. As it drip, drip, dripped onto Betty through the ceiling of her all-white bedroom, it gave her the distinct impression that Aunt Phyllis had been murdered in the windowless garret in which she slept.
    Nobody balked at the mess or inconvenience. ChâteauDoonan was so fruity and sweet that everyone, all the assorted lodgers and relatives, knocked it back with ever-increasing enthusiasm. We entered an era of bacchanalian largesse during which, between Uncle Peter’s gin sample room and Terry’s ad hoc winery, no Doonan ever darkened the door of the local liquor store again. It wasn’t a hobby, it was a lifestyle, an utterly intoxicating lifestyle.
    My dad was beside himself, especially when he found out that you could make wine from just about anything.
    “It makes you wonder why they bugger about with grapes in France when you can make a delicious wine from potato peelings,” he guffawed as he secreted yet more bottles of tea-leaf and parsnip wine in the crawl space under the living room floor.
    It was not long before Terry figured out that he could magically increase the intoxication level simply by adding more sugar at the right juncture. As a result, Château Doonan became more of a rich, fruity sherry than a wine.
    Terry made gallons and gallons and gallons of it, which meant we could then drink gallons and gallons and gallons of it. Which is what we did. By the time I hit my teens, I was sloshing a dollop of Château Doonan in my Ribena, and learning to love the warm, comforting glow which ensued.
    Terry’s vin extraordinaire and Uncle Peter’s gin played a very important role in the day-to-day functioning of our family. Simply put, alcohol took the edge off. Alcohol was the low-cost prescription which enabled Betty and Terry to deal with the strains and unpredictability of life with batty Uncle Ken, not to mention the crazed and belligerent Narg.
    “Narg put her bloomers in the oven and set them on fire!”
    Slosh, gurgle, swallow. “No problem!”
    “Uncle Ken rode his bicycle into the canal!”
    “Bottoms up! Is he okay?”
    “Narg hurled insults at the ladies from the Women’s Institute!”
    “Mmmm! Try this! What did she actually say?”
    This is not a new concept. Lunatics have always driven their caretakers to drink. Grace Poole, nurse to the mad