Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
house space, evaporating slowly and getting tastier. It will not get you any more drunk
than a much cheaper similar-strength blend, so what you're paying the extra for is the
taste, and that taste's going to be completely overpowered by the sugary fizz you're
adding. If, at the end of all this, somebody still wants to drink their malt with ice and
soda, well, that's their choice, and every measure and every bottle sold is helping to keep
the industry going, people employed and a way of life thriving, no matter.
The way I was taught to take whisky is first to use your eyes to check out the colour.
Then swirl the stuff around the glass to see how thick or thin it is, observing its legs (the
little rivulets that run down the side of the glass after you've swirled it). Next have a good
sniff, open mouthed or whatever. Then take a sip completely neat. How much you sip can
depend on how strong the whisky is - cask strength can be very strong, over 100 proof,
and hence a bit nippy, straight. In effect your own saliva will dilute the whisky, so the
stronger the stuff, the smaller the sip.
According to taste, mix with water. Adding the same again is a standard measure,
though a lot of people think this is exactly double what's ideal. In any event, some cask-
strengths in particular might need quite a lot of watering down. Then just drink. And sa-
vour, if you will; roll the stuff around in your mouth, feel it there and in your throat when
you swallow. Don't knock back in a single gulp unless you're at an airport and they've
got to the stage of calling you by name and threatening to close the flight, or unless you
have just been told you've won the lottery, or are going to become a father (obviously you
won't be celebrating being told you're going to be a mother. Not with alcohol, anyway.
Have a fag instead).
Les and I met in Greenock High School. At the time I was writing these truly awful
stories about a character called Dahommey Breshnev (sic, and, yet again, sic). These were
bizarre, poor and just plain bad for lots of reasons but principally because I was really into
puns at the time and was trying to squeeze as many puns into each story as I could. The
stories became pun-driven, pun-led; I made the stories up as I went along and at every
junction of the tale, whenever there was a choice about what was going to happen next, I
invariably went for the route that seemed to promise the highest number of puns.
* * *
And that's one of the good ones
.
Here's an example of those puns: one of the characters in a later Dahommey Breshnev
story was called Toss Macabre.
Told you.
