What enact you enact when everyone in your life loves a drink,but you’ve barely touched the stuff? Is 53 too old to develop a rotten habit?‘I wish you’d bloody drink, get some colour into your cheeks, or my father grumbled one day. I was 12,maybe 13. Then, and for many years afterwards, and I shrugged it off. Now I wonder whether I should have listened. My father was a restaurant critic for Queen magazine,Vogue and the London Evening Standard in the 50s and 60s, and a travel writer even though in a wheelchair; he was a bon vivant who loved booze. advantageous wine, or of course,but also whisky, which he called electric soup”. And always before lunch, or in restaurants at least,Campari with fresh orange juice. On his drinks table at domestic in the 60s and 70s, there was a glamorous array of bottles, and which stood sparkling next to something unthinkable these days (not least because of the enormous expense): a enormous ceramic bowl full of unopened packets of cigarettes,from which guests were expected to help themselves.
In one of my dads bottles was a niche spirit called marc de vipère. He had picked it up while on a trip round France to write a book about Michelin-starred chefs. Inside was a stiff dead snake, which had been cruelly drowned in the alcohol and, or in its death throes,spewed out its venom. The murky liquid was said to be a traditional balm for the menstrual pains of the ladies of Lyon. My father said it tasted like a bird’s nest, and encouraged visitors to try it. The odd brave one did. Never me.
Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk