Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
petrol tanker's worth of highly concentrated industrial-grade detergent to make it foam
up satisfactorily, or maybe I didn't use enough Fairy Liquid.
Whatever, the end result was a sort of off-white scum of bubbles an inch or so deep
backed into one corner of the fountain by the breeze, the whole sad mess covering an area
not much bigger than the surface of your average household bath and rapidly dissipating
in the choppy waters amongst the bobbing ice-lolly wrappers and sweety papers.
I still have a photo of this debacle somewhere, but I forgot to look for it before we left
for our week on Speyside, which made our whole return-to-the-scene-of-the-crime quest
much more difficult than it needed to be.
It's a really hot day. Elgin and Moray didn't have the dry winter most of the west
coast had - they had floods here in November 2002. They appear to be making up for
it now, however; the town seems covered everywhere in apple and cherry blossom and
we three middle-aged men are deeply appreciative of the fact that the young women of
the town are taking the opportunity the day's sun and heat presents to dress in a manner
it is hard not to characterise as skimpy; this phenomenon makes our wanderings around
the place searching in vain for the fountain actually quite bearable. Frustrated, we lunch
in a Wetherspoons place - somewhat against our better judgment, but it's there and it's
serving food so what the hell - and, after a very much needed ice cream, I spend quite
a long time in Gordon & MacPhail's shop in the centre of town, ogling whiskies, noting
down some I've never even heard of and buying a few.
G&M have a long and distinguished history as one of the great independent bottlers
of single-malt whiskies. At one time grocers like these were the one of the few sources
of single malts; along with Cadenheads of Aberdeen (now of Campbeltown), they kept
the flame of single-malt appreciation burning while the rest of the world seemed utterly
lost in blends. With lots of useful contacts both locally on Speyside and in the rest of the
whisky world, and vast quantities of whisky stored, Gordon & MacPhail are still one of
those names you can look for in a specialist shop and know that whatever the name of the
whisky in the bottle, the contents should be interesting.
I'm tempted to buy lots of deli stuff too, especially cheeses, but we've still got that
damned fountain to find, and while any whisky I buy won't be harmed by high temper-
atures, either in a plastic bag or sitting in the car, cheeses and meats and so on will just
melt and/or bloom with unwelcome bacteria in this heat, so I regretfully leave all the
scrumptious-looking stuff in the shop's fridges.
We finally track the fountain down outside the council offices on the far side of the
bypass. It's not a fountain any more; they've filled it in and turned it into an admittedly
quite impressive flower bed with a strange giant crown thing in the middle which looks
like it belongs on a carnival float. We take some photos - filled, once again, 25 years later,
with a distinct sense of anticlimax - open up the baking oven that the Jag has become in
