How simple things used to be. Once, vegetarians were the only food fusspots around (I used to get my own back by serving risotto laced with home-made chicken stock - they loved it). Anyone foolish enough to invite people for dinner now, when Camilla doesn't eat wheat or dairy, John is on the Atkins and Beatrice is allergic to chlorophyll ("Ruinous to my skin tone, darling"), had better give consideration to the miserable wraiths "on detox" who refuse to drink as well.
I would suggest offering them a glass and free use of the kitchen tap, but one must try to be jollier than that. Fruit juices are too infantile. Cordials may do for quenching thirst. Various tisanes and perhaps fresh mint (far better than dried-up sachets of peppermint tea) will do for post-dinner refreshment. But what in between? I suggest tonic water. Served to look like gin and tonic - rattling with ice cubes and with a good chunk of lemon or lime - it will also stop your other guests being depressed by the sight of someone not drinking.
Besides, tonic water is rather louche in its way. It was invented, so legend has it, because British soldiers stationed in the tropics used to make the eye-wateringly bitter quinine that they took to counter malaria more palatable by mixing it with gin. Eventually, they grew so fond of the taste that (much smaller) doses of quinine were added to carbonated water to be drunk for purely recreational reasons along with the gin.
There is not enough quinine in tonic water for it to be of any medicinal use. Unless you are a Fat Lady. On seeing a doctor about her "sticky blood", Clarissa Dickson Wright was once asked if she'd lived in a malaria belt (the condition is usually found in those who've taken a lot of malaria tablets). "Quinine!" she said. "How about tonic water?" "My dear, you would have had to drink a very great deal over a very long period of time," the doctor replied. "How about six pints of gin and tonic a day for 12 years?" The consultant conceded that this might do it.
Quinine has a colourful history. It comes from the bark of the cinchona tree, which grows in the sub-Andean rainforests of South America. Legend has it that it came to the attention of westerners after a native healer used it to cure the wife of the viceroy of Peru of fever in the 17th century. Its medicinal properties were much revered, and at one point it was in such short supply that it cost the same as gold. Some claim the conquest of the New World may not have happened without it.
All of this makes tonic water an almost respectable drink for teetotallers. Because it is bitter, it is also blessedly slow to drink, although sometimes not slow enough, so add a few drops of Angostura bitters for a more hard-core option.
