Drink - Victoria Moore begins a retoxification programme
I'm told that 60 is the new 40. This means, I'm sure, that 40 is the new 20. And this means that I may continue to pretend that not reducing my water intake so that I have to keep walking to the loo, and running up the escalators on the tube (well, I could just stand there), pass for exercise. It also means that I can safely pay a visit to the latest of drinking gimmicks, the Retox Bar. (Just look at that first letter again - it's not a D.)
So I muse as I stroll through central London and hit the thick, city-generated heat on the Strand. Retoxing isn't really possible in my case, but I'm interested to see what happens when someone tries. All round Covent Garden, people are sloughing off winter and work at outside tables, but you have to descend into a twilit basement to find the Retox Bar; so, once there, you immediately lose sense of time passing - a good start.
Disappointment, however, lurks close by. The menu goes halfway towards spoofing the detestable "wheatgrass shot" offerings of a healthy juice bar with shooters called Red Eye and Rigor Mortis. But I want to be taken to one side by a bartender with a good bedside manner and asked which areas of my life I feel too healthy about. I want a confession that I ate raw vegetables for lunch to be eased slowly out of me, and an artery-furring Brandy Alexander smooth with cool cream to be prescribed as an antidote. After a few hours, I may begin to cry and shake and admit that, two weeks ago, I actually went so far as to slip on a pair of trainers and begin to lace them up. My sobs will be quelled by the arrival of the deadliest of martinis, stirred from purest, coldest vodka and a single drop of vermouth.
Instead I join Ben, the enthusiastic assistant bar manager, who simply asks me what sort of cocktail I like. Because I say "sour", I am handed a Continental Sour (Cointreau, Frangelico, orange, bitters, gomme syrup and lemon juice). Nice, but not worth being in a basement on a warm evening for. So we move on to one of the bar's six "Retox Programmes", which involve a load of ingredients being brought to your table so that you can make cocktails up as you go along. "Mix your way back to health" is the slogan.
But who wants to mix their own drink when a bartender can do it so much better? For a second, Ben looks like the emperor with no clothes, but who knew all along that he was naked and hoped to be able to fool everyone else. Then he recovers and explains that people enjoy participating in the mixing process. It's about group bonding. High-school chemistry. "All our drinks are very strong," he smiles, distracting criticism with his trump card.
So we all start squeezing orange juice on to our hands, shaking on some cinnamon and doing the lick, swallow, squeeze thing with golden tequila mixed with Moet (a really shocking waste of good champagne) and orange slices. Before long, I'm very drunk but in a bizarrely miserable kind of way. Worse, my literary agent friend Lizzy - who, like me, never strictly needed to retox, but was prepared to submit herself to the process in any case - is talking work across the table. Kind of. "I suppose", she is saying without conviction, "you could write a novel about having to wear wellies in the messy lab at equestrian college. It could be the next big thing, after food books." She sighs and looks at me wretchedly. Suddenly, all we want is a plain old glass of chilled white wine.
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