Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
HERE'S A HANDY
tip: when a cocktail recipe begins with the words, Take A Pint Glass …
beware.
My friend Roger invented the Blue Moon in a bar in Sheffield when the owner fool-
ishly invited him to order any cocktail he liked, on the house. You fill the glass half full of
ice cubes, then introduce measures of: vodka, gin, white rum, tequila, Cointreau, Pernod
and blue curaçao. Add a dash of lime juice and top up with lemonade. My variation is
to top up with soda water to produce a less sweet-tasting drink. The result, whether us-
ing lemonade or soda water, is an electric blue pint of almost luminous intensity which
smells slightly of aniseed and is pretty much guaranteed to sweep your legs from beneath
you somewhere around halfway down the glass, especially if the measures are 35 mill
rather than 25. Roger says they aren't called Blue Moons because of the colour but be-
cause they're so horrendously expensive it's only possible to afford them once in a blue
moon.
I've known Roger since '87. He's gone from working in a video store to being a script
writer, so displaying consistency and ambition. Over the last few years he seems to have
developed a habit of writing the screenplays for various of my books which never then
get made into films -
Espedair Street, The Bridge, Dead Air
- though we live in hope, I
guess. The scripts are fine - inspired, in fact - but it's just the usual film industry yes-no-
ery when it comes to getting films financed. We've been through, I think it's fair to say,
a few scrapes together over the years. Roger is one of these people that makes me look
eminently sober, sensible and sedate. I've already written his epitaph:
Here lies the body
of Roger Gray, the man who led himself astray
. Roger thinks this is a really cool epitaph
and has, worryingly, at times seemed almost enthusiastic about securing its imminent de-
ployment on his gravestone.
Something of a tradition has grown up in the last few years or so of Roger staying
with us over his birthday and the two of us - sometimes with other accomplices, some-
times not - having Blue Moons in the Café Royal Bar, on West Register Street, Edin-
burgh. For years we've turned up there in late April to find another new lot of bartenders
who invariably look completely blank when we mention Blue Moons and who often have
to be persuaded that making something like this is even legal before actually starting to
put the blighters together.
