Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
We'd always kind of hoped Blue Moons would have become legendary amongst the
staff in the intervening twelve months, or at least be remembered from one year to the
next, but it has never happened. Until this year. When we turned up in the Café Royal in
2003 - in May, a little delayed - the bar manager we talked to not only remembered us
and the Blue Moons, he'd made sure there was a bottle of blue curaçao in the cellar for
when we did appear.
So we were happy. But then it's hard not to be when supping a Blue Moon anyway.
Our record, of which I assure you we are not proud, is three. Frankly, two is pushing
it. Just one will tend to get you outrageously drunk if consumed at any speed - drunk
to the point, for example, that having a second one gradually starts to seem like a fairly
sensible and indeed only logical course of action. Quite how an idea that - it is solemnly
agreed by all concerned beforehand - is Totally Idiotic somehow blurs through Well, Not
To Be Dismissed Out Of Hand into Maybe Not Such A Bad Idea After All and then fi-
nally emerges fully transformed into Another One? Why, What An Absolutely Brilliant
And Indeed Utterly Imperative Concept! is just one of life's more intractable mysteries.
The tricky thing is that it can only really be fully appreciated somewhere around two-
thirds of the way down a Blue Moon in the first place, by which time all bets on common
sense, logical thought, joined-up cogitation and indeed reliably focused bicameral vision
are already long since profoundly off.
When you drink a Blue Moon you can actually feel your body becoming drunk; usu-
ally from the legs up. When this starts to happen getting off the bar stools in the Café
Royal - if we haven't managed to bag a table - takes some forethought and planning, be-
cause while your brain is innocently labouring under the delusion that it's just sitting here
drinking this kind of harmless-looking blue drink and feeling dreamily, unaccountably
happy in a la-la-la sort of way, your legs know differently, and are no longer in reliable,
uncorrupted communication with - or under the full control of - your brain. Neither of us
have ever fallen over, but it's always a concern.
The Café Royal and I have some history. It was here I had a drink with Mic Cheetham
before she became my agent and discovered she was a Laphroaig fan too. I'd been in the
fortunate position of being able to take my pick of agents after years of not having any-
body to represent me. Until this point, James Hale, my editor, and Mary Pachnos, Mac-
millan's rights director, both of whom were good friends, had made sure that I got a fair
deal from the company, but when they were leaving Macmillan and I was leaving Faver-
sham for Edinburgh, it seemed sensible to have independent professional representation.
I talked to half a dozen agents, all of whom were very pleasant and friendly and obvi-
ously extremely well qualified. To a man they each offered tea or coffee - one was going
to take me to tea at the Ritz, though the hotel wouldn't serve us because I was wearing
black 501s - but Mic - Mary Pachnos's suggestion as a possible agent - was the only one
