My daughter turned 18 last month. I mentioned it in this piece about Berlin.

When my son turned 18 two years ago we took a symbolic trip to a nearby pub for him to buy a pint of beer for the first time. It was a pint of London Pride, for me. He had lemonade. Neither he nor his sister is partial to alcohol, which is fine by me. There might be parents who want to see their children go through the same rites of passage as they did, but I am glad that neither of my children has ever got falling-down-drunk, or any other kind of drunk. The closest my son has come, prompted by a good family friend, is mildly tipsy: a flavoured cider and a few “baby Guinnesses”. In case you are unfamiliar with this little cocktail it consists of a measure of Kahlua (or other coffee-based liqueur) almost filling a shot glass, then topped off with Bailey’s to make it look like a tiny glass of Guinness. It’s sweet, with a bit of a coffee kick and it’s just about the only alcoholic drink that my son has had more then two of in any one session.

He is not into beer, wine, champagne, or hard liquor. Every time he has tried any of these drinks, no matter how enthusiastic he might be to begin with, he is wincing and making pained expressions by the time he has tried to swallow it. My daughter can tolerate the taste of beer, but has never had more than a glass of it.

On the day of my daughter’s 18th birthday we had planned to make another symbolic trip to the pub for her to buy me a pint, legally. As things turned out we waited eight days, until she had returned from her school trip to Berlin. We went to a place where I have been playing music and hosting pub quizzes many times over the last year. The beer was a regular bitter (called Long Man), which she tried and did not like. She ordered a cider, and the barmaid poured a pint rather than a half. My daughter didn’t like the taste of that one either. I ended up drinking all of my pint and most of her pint of cider. It’s the most cider I have drunk since the 1980s.

Later that evening, after watching “Strictly Come Dancing”, the three of us (my son, daughter and I) went to a bar where someone I had met last month was celebrating his 70th birthday. Just the one drink for each of us: a pint of London Pride for me, a 500ml bottle of Nash’s Red Lemonade for my son, and a half of London Pride for my daughter. She topped it up with the red lemonade to make it sweeter.

By the time I was 18 I had had many drinking sessions with my father, and with my older brother, though not too many with all three of us at the same time. My evening sessions with my brother were usually at the George IV on Chiswick High Road, and there were many weekend afternoons with my father at the Mawson Arms, near Hogarth Roundabout. I was probably 15 the first time I bought my father a beer. It certainly happened many times when I was 16, on those weekend afternoons when the pubs shut at 2pm (Sunday) or 3pm (Saturday). Those sessions would typically involve 4 or 6 pints of Guinness, and we’d take turns to buy each round.

As my 18th birthday approached I speculated that I might just give up beer for a while. Where was the fun in drinking alcohol when it was legal? My father seemed to like the idea, and quoted it often in the years afterwards. Even so, I did have a couple of pints on the day itself, a Sunday. I had been out late the night before, watching some old schoolfriends play at the Moonlight Club in West Hampstead. One of them came round on the Sunday evening and we had a couple of symbolic pints at the George IV. It was the first time that I bought an alcoholic drink legally. And now both of my children can do the same.