
There's an easy way to tell if I've had a 'mother' of a day. It's when I retreat to the shower and take a glass of pink wine in with me. The first time I did it, I felt like I'd cracked the keys to the universe. And now - I'm not so sure.
Mummy wine culture is the stuff of internet memes and light-hearted jokes. It’s printed on novelty glasses and carries cultural callbacks to Tami Taylor in Friday Night Lights. Tami drank a lot – but everyone wanted to be Tami.
A wine mum/mom is someone who drinks to take the edge of parenting and who is self knowing enough to poke fun at that fact. Mum-wine-life was there in the bottles of white wine we used to take to the park on Friday afternoons and plastic cups, along with Tupperwares of cut up cucumber and carrot, sausages and bread rolls for the kids. We would have a drink and cheers 'TGIF' while the kids rumbled and played.
For me, it got more potent when we had the kids at home in those long formless days of lockdowns. It wasn't just a wine with dinner or with friends. It morphed into the medicinal tinkle of ice and Campari that I came to crave at 4.15 pm, as the sky started to purple. It helped mark the passage of time after hours of home-school fracas and a three-year-old who wanted to play endless rounds of 'sick baby horse'.
Watch: Here are just some effects after one year without drinking alcohol. Story continues after video.