PUT A CORK IN IT

As a report claims just 27% of young people own a corkscrew, Olivia Petter reflects on the effect of solo boozing at home

The scene goes something like this: girl sitting by an open kitchen window with her feet in the sink. The door is closed; her cat is curled up on the other side, meowing intermittently with concern. There is a cigarette dangling between her fingers in one hand. The other is curled around her third glass of wine of the evening. There is piano music playing, soundtracking the girl’s despair. She is alone. She is crying. She is drunk.

It sounds like something out of a botched Bridget Jones film. And yet, it was – for a time – something I performed regularly. I say performed because that’s what I was doing: playing the part of the sad, lonely (but chic!) girl, one who’d clearly spent far too much of her youth watching Sex and the City and attempting to cosplay Carrie Bradshaw. But I really did it a lot, particularly throughout the pandemic, when my drinking became an almost daily occurrence, and in the years that followed.

My point is that I was drinking at home often. And while it’s not something I do anymore, I was reminded this week of just how much I used to do it when I read that only 27 per cent of people aged 18 to 24 in the UK now own a corkscrew. Translation: today’s young people aren’t drinking wine at home (or wine with a cork, at the very least). To put it all into perspective a little, 81 per cent of over-65s own a corkscrew, according to Lakeland’s annual trends report.