Make mine a small one, bartender...

So I'm taking the Government's proposal to reduce the size of wine measures in pubs personally. They want to halve how much I drink.

Of course, this irks me. I hate my pastimes being policed. But I can't deny that glass size is a growing problem. Every bar serves big wine measures now - you feel cheated if they don't. Thanks to the steadily rising alcohol percentage in wine, it's up to three units down the hatch with every round, your daily limit as a female.

And as any slightly pissed woman will tell you, it is so much harder to keep track of what you've drunk when your glass holds nearly half a pint of wine. No one forced us to go to the bar - but the drinks industry must take part of the blame. By doubling the size of our glasses, it's effectively spiked our drinks.

I have an uncharacteristically clear-headed memory of my first properly large glass. When I went into the brand new All Bar One, a chain aimed squarely at the wine-drinking woman, I was amazed - and delighted - to be presented with a gigantic goblet of chardonnay. More so when the barman suggested I buy the whole bottle.

Ten years and many headaches later, there's been a big glass revolution. Grown-up professional women no longer split a single bottle of dry white and feel a bit racy. We glug down several at a sitting without flinching. There are the inevitable consequences. For some these are ill-advised phone calls and sexual encounters with men you wouldn't touch sober. For the rest of us, crawling into the office hungover is par for the course. The sobering thing is, when you add up our sick days and other health-related costs, we've helped run up an estimated national tab of £25 billion a year.

Would a smaller glass really make a jot of difference? I think it might. Now that I'm an older, more sensible drinker, I've come to appreciate the significance of the first glass. It empties in moments no matter how much it contains. But if my first is a big one, I'm much more likely to order another - because the brakes are already off.

And I've discovered small glasses have a hidden benefit. You can fit them in the dishwasher. Another reason to downsize your drinking.