5:00 P.M.

At roughly this hour every day, I sit down and have a drink — either a kir (pictured here) or a gin-and-tonic. And on those rare occasions when I want to start my alcohol regimen earlier in the day, I remind myself of what the Victorians and Edwardians (or was it Christopher Hitchens?) said: “Somewhere in the British Empire, it is already five o’clock.”