I HAVE long been intrigued by the nation’s ambivalence towards alcohol.

Constant hand-wringing, head-scratching and soul-searching takes place in an attempt to explain and contain our obsession with this most successful and seductive of stimulants.

Physicians warn, psychiatrists counsel, sociologists analyse and sociopaths revel, but explanation and direction? Not a great deal.

So, before my somewhat limited intellect loses its unequal struggle with a fruity but economical little French number, I will try to explain where it all went wrong.

Somehow, and well before smoking bans and all-day ale, our perception of drink was changed: a pie and a pint or a glass of wine and a baguette for lunch became at first frowned upon, and then forbidden during the working day.

Slowly, to a sizeable and swelling minority, alcohol ceased to have any function other than intoxication. It became a straight choice, absinthe or abstinence; a well established national penchant for a dram meant only one likely outcome.

We have reached a point where what is acceptable and unacceptable is governed not by conscience, but by clock and calendar: a lunchtime pint replaced by a night-time gallon, a couple on the way home sacrificed for 20 times that during the weekend. None of us are so naïve to accept this is the only reason for our problems, but I do believe it may well have been the finger that pulled the trigger.

There are plenty of occupations where the alcohol limit should remain as zero, but has anyone ever been seriously injured by an out-of-control photocopier driven by an operator high on half a pint of Timothy Taylors?

Richard Bowen, Farrar Street, York.