Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
indeed almost desperately assured Saddam has - isn't now, when you're being invaded
by troop concentrations heading straight for your major cities, when you'd use them?
Anyway, it all goes very quickly and smoothly for the invading forces. The Brits sort
of take Basra. The US Marines cross the Euphrates.
Then everything stalls, and it almost looks like another of the nightmare scenarios is
going to kick in, with stubborn resistance in depth and behind the various fronts, irregu-
lars attacking the supply chains. Then that all fades away too and it's on to Baghdad.
Despite one or two scares, still no chemical or biological weapons turn up. I sit in the
flat above the old barn each night, nursing a whisky, unable to believe this is really hap-
pening, that we've gone to war because, well, basically because George Dubya Bush and
his right-wing pals wanted to, and Tony Blair was determined to do whatever Bush asked
of him, seemingly happy to risk destroying the UN and sundering the EU just so that the
US could have its second pushover war in two years.
But then, hey, I couldn't believe it a couple of years ago when Bush lost the election
and yet got given the presidency, and hardly anybody seemed to get upset (certainly al-
most nobody in America was
reported
as getting upset); not much national or worldwide
outrage at the fact the most powerful nation in the history of the planet had been taken
over by a cross-eyed cretin backed by gang of drooling, mean-spirited, proto-fascist shit-
heads.
My bedtime reading, when I'm not looking at other books about whisky, is
Stupid
White Men
, by Michael Moore. It's good - a little tabloid with the italics and so on, per-
haps, but very to the point given the current situation. In fact painfully so; I can only take
it a few pages at a time before my blood starts to boil.
This is where a stiff whisky really does make all the difference. No matter how
fucked-up the world may get, a good dram will make it at least slightly more bearable.
And A-flippin-men to that.
Our first proper distillery visit - doing the tour, talking to people, checking out the visit-
ors' shop, me assiduously taking notes - is on the Monday.
I take John to the airport and meet Oliver the Editor off the wee plane that will take
John on the first leg of his long journey back south.
Oliver the Editor - Oliver Johnson - is a big, friendly, comfortable-seeming kind of
guy. As well as both being writers and having a certain interest in whisky, we've def-
initely bonded over two more important, character-defining interests; curry, and maps.
Oliver is a fellow cartophile. We've met a couple of times before. The first time was to
seal the deal on the topic in The Vaults, HQ of the estimable Scottish Malt Whisky So-
ciety. That's where we started, anyway, with quite a lot of single malts. Then we took in
a bar across the road where I had entirely the worst whisky I've ever tasted (it was some
