I will say this right from the start; I think climate change is a real issue and I believe that the evidence strongly suggests that human being have played a part in it, at least. I think that the evidence also suggests that the climate change which is occurring is that the planet is getting hotter faster than it would if there were no industrialization.
I am open to reasoned argument that is opposed to my point of view, but note what I said; 'reasoned argument.' Supported by peer reviewed evidence. Lots of it. I will not treat with respect anything that says it's god's will because we're a) promiscuous b) druggies c) blasphemers d) turning people into homosexuals because we support gay marriage e) . . . You get the picture.
However, as a book reviewer and enthusiastic filmgoer, I think the whole instant cataclysm as suggested by disaster films such as The Day After Tomorrow are going a but too far. Rising seas, superstorms, a cataclysmic freeze, might be a result of climatic change, but not that fast, and not all at once.
Which brings me to a book that's recently been published, which I shall not name, but I'll discuss it's premise. The Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica drops into the sea and Australia is hit by fifteen metre tsunamis. The Ross Ice Shelf is the biggest in Antarctica, getting on for half a million square kilometres, and if it dropped into the ocean all at once, it would make a helluva splash.
Except it wouldn't. It's already in the ocean. It's sea-ice, floating in the water. Detaching it from its niche would cause ripples, but not a tsunami.
Okay, but suppose I'm wrong, and it did cause a fifteen-metre tsunami to rush out from Marie Byrd Land and Victoria Land. What would happen?
Well, the way the ice shelf points out into the Pacific, New Zealand would be in for a hard time, and then it would somehow have to swing around the two islands and head for Australia. It would have to cover the thousands of kilometres between Antarctica and Australia and retain enough force to hit the coast while remaining fifteen metres high. It would be pretty nasty. Parts of Sydney and Melbourne might be swept away. The west coast wouldn't be affected, nor would Darwin, probably not Adelaide, and possibly not Brisbane. Canberra, 150 km inland and 500-odd metres above sea level, wouldn't be touched.
So, Sydney and Melbourne damaged, in parts. Mostly the beach suburbs. Sydney CBD wouldn't suffer much, because there are these two big, rocky things called the Heads that protect Sydney Harbour. The central bourse of Manly would be wiped out, but the land rises pretty steeply away from the water, and the water would just spill over into the harbour. Melbourne would probably be the same, because the tsunami would have to get through Port Phillip Bay.
What would happen to the infrastructure of Australia? Not much. Government wouldn't be wiped out, essential services wouldn't suffer much, and the military would be pretty much intact. You see, a tsunami is just one, single event that doesn't last for very long, even though it's sever while it lasts. A super-storm can last for much longer than a tsunami, and can travel over a wider area.
There's also evidence that supports the idea that a tsunami generated in Antarctica wouldn't really affect Australia very much. The 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake, which occurred just off the west coast of northern Sumatra, caused a tsunami in the Indian Ocean which was, at times, 24 to 30 metres high when it hit Aceh. How big was it when the wave reached Perth? It didn't get right up the beach.
Okay, drop the Ross Ice Shelf; I somehow think the effects are over-rated.
And that brings me back to whisky, and a vexed question. Should one put ice in whisky? The Whisky Trail people believe that the ideal temperature for tasting whisky is 15 degrees centigrade. They are not against the addition of a little water, as long as the whisky does not break up. They recommend adding it little by little until the prickle in your nose has died away. They do not recommend adding ice.
However, they're based in Scotland, and it's easy to keep a bottle of whisky down to 15 degrees. Here in the great land of Oz, the temperature stays above fifteen degrees most of the time, and in summer it's often twice that. So do we ice, or not ice?
I suggest a compromise; chilled water, with ice in it. You can use those whisky rocks that you shove in the freezer, which don't melt, or just get a very long iceblock and swirl it around in the whisky, but the first is rather twee and the second makes you look stupid. I'll stick by the chilled water.
Bye
Monday, 7 July 2014
Thursday, 3 July 2014
WORDS, GOING CHEAP
I was listening to the car radio as I drove back from doing the shopping for tonight's dinner (Stockman's (god knows why they call it that) sirloin mini-roast, roast vegetables, broccolini, carrots and gravy) and the announcer had a guest in the studio, an expert on words. She was discussing neologisms and malapropisms and wonderful things like that, and that got me thinking about writing.
There is a dictum I follow, or try to follow, and I teach it to my students; don't send a ten-dollar word to do a ten-cent job. I see it a lot at university, because the student has read an article, or stolen from an article, and really doesn't understand the vocabulary used in the article, but they're determined to use it in their essay, by crikey, just to show that they've read something. Thus, stories they've been told as kids become parental anecdotes related in childhood, lies become quasi-relevant structural factual fabrications, and they go to parties to become bibulous.
I'm as fond of polysyllabic words as any academic who's been through the hell of a PhD thesis - it's a love-hate relationship - but I'll call a chimney sooty, rather than fuliginous, or someone half-awake, rather than hypnopompic. It gets worse when we enter the somewhat louche (hah!) world of literary criticism. Terms such as alliteration (Simon seeks some simple solutions) are okay, even though people often can't distinguish it from assonance (it's inspiration is indolence). But I can't blame people for scratching their heads when dithyrambic or choriambic come up. When we hit Modern Literary Theory, in all its self-admiring wonder, who can but be confused by the terms used, often only for a single theory enunciated by a single person? Dasein, for instance, or hypogram. These are specialist words, for specialist discussions. If you wish to be one of these specialists, you have to learn the specialist lexicon, much as you would have to learn all the terms used in cricket to be a cricket commentator and talk about cricket. I would submit that hermeneutics or semiotics are terms no stranger to normal discourse than googly or doosrah. But, I would also submit, they are equally specialised.
And this brings me to Joyce and Eliot. T S Eliot once said that his poetry was intended to be read by any educated man. What he didn't say was that the educated man (and I'm quoting, so don't accuse me of sexism, it's all Tom's fault) should have studied Latin, Ancient Greek, French, German, Sanskrit, classic literature and philosophy. Consider the introduction the The Waste Land:
“Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi
in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σιβυλλα
τι θελεις; respondebat illa: αποθανειν θελω.”
How's your Latin? How's your Greek? Do you want to live? Do you want to die? While I love Eliot's poetry, in order to read it effectively one has to study; become educated in the same fashion as Eliot, who really did, quite often, send ten-dollar words to do a ten-cent job. I mean, periphrastic? Really? Old Possum's not much better, and that was for kids.
Which leads me,in a periphrastic way, to James Joyce. I believe I have discovered the best method of reading Finnegan's Wake: think drunk. You don't have to be drunk, although this may help, but think drunk, as though you are in a pub, which is very appropriate, listening to many drunken conversations, or what passes for conversation among a pubfull of drunk Irishmen.
"What clashes here of wills gen wonts, oystrygods gaggin fishy-gods! Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax! Ualu Ualu Ualu! Quaouauh! Where the Baddelaries partisans are still out to mathmaster Malachus Micgranes and the Verdons cata-pelting the camibalistics out of the Whoyteboyce of Hoodie Head. Assiegates and boomeringstroms. Sod’s brood, be me fear! Sanglorians, save! Arms apeal with larms, appalling. Killykill-killy: a toll, a toll. What chance cuddleys, what cashels aired and ventilated! What bidimetoloves sinduced by what tegotetab-solvers! What true feeling for their’s hayair with what strawng voice of false jiccup! O here here how hoth sprowled met the duskt the father of fornicationists but, (O my shining stars and body!) how hath fanespanned most high heaven the skysign of soft advertisement! But was iz? Iseut? Ere were sewers? The oaks of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either shall the pharce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish."
Now, does that not sound like pissed prose from loose lips lubricated with . . .
This is the whisky part.
Writers Tears Irish Whiskey.
I discovered this in Dublin, a few years ago, when we stayed there a couple of nights after being in the beautiful Beara Peninsula for a week. Dublin, for me, was not much of a fair city, but this was when the GFC was making mockery of the Celtic Tiger. There were many unemployed people, and an air of discontent, but not in the Celtic Whisky Shop. It's down in Dawson St, not far from the National Library of Ireland, where we had wandered around the Yeats exhibition. There were many whiskies, but my eye was drawn to the Writers Tears, and I bought it.
Jim Murray gives it 93 points and says of it:
"A glossy pot still character: rather than the usual fruity firmness, the recognisable pot still traits are shrouded in soft honey tones which dovetail with lightening kumquat-citrus tones. Quite a curious, but always deliciously appealing animal. Works beautifully well: the arrival is an alternating delivery of soft and hard waves, the former showing a more bitter, almost myopic determination to hammer home its traditional pot still stand point; the sweeter more yielding notes dissolve with little or no resistance, leaving an acacia honeyed trail.."
What he means, deprived of reviewer speak, is that it slides down the throat like honeyed oil, like the kiss of your lover distilled, like the dew from the tree of life. You can get it in Australia, if you search a little.
Bye
There is a dictum I follow, or try to follow, and I teach it to my students; don't send a ten-dollar word to do a ten-cent job. I see it a lot at university, because the student has read an article, or stolen from an article, and really doesn't understand the vocabulary used in the article, but they're determined to use it in their essay, by crikey, just to show that they've read something. Thus, stories they've been told as kids become parental anecdotes related in childhood, lies become quasi-relevant structural factual fabrications, and they go to parties to become bibulous.
I'm as fond of polysyllabic words as any academic who's been through the hell of a PhD thesis - it's a love-hate relationship - but I'll call a chimney sooty, rather than fuliginous, or someone half-awake, rather than hypnopompic. It gets worse when we enter the somewhat louche (hah!) world of literary criticism. Terms such as alliteration (Simon seeks some simple solutions) are okay, even though people often can't distinguish it from assonance (it's inspiration is indolence). But I can't blame people for scratching their heads when dithyrambic or choriambic come up. When we hit Modern Literary Theory, in all its self-admiring wonder, who can but be confused by the terms used, often only for a single theory enunciated by a single person? Dasein, for instance, or hypogram. These are specialist words, for specialist discussions. If you wish to be one of these specialists, you have to learn the specialist lexicon, much as you would have to learn all the terms used in cricket to be a cricket commentator and talk about cricket. I would submit that hermeneutics or semiotics are terms no stranger to normal discourse than googly or doosrah. But, I would also submit, they are equally specialised.
And this brings me to Joyce and Eliot. T S Eliot once said that his poetry was intended to be read by any educated man. What he didn't say was that the educated man (and I'm quoting, so don't accuse me of sexism, it's all Tom's fault) should have studied Latin, Ancient Greek, French, German, Sanskrit, classic literature and philosophy. Consider the introduction the The Waste Land:
“Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi
in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σιβυλλα
τι θελεις; respondebat illa: αποθανειν θελω.”
How's your Latin? How's your Greek? Do you want to live? Do you want to die? While I love Eliot's poetry, in order to read it effectively one has to study; become educated in the same fashion as Eliot, who really did, quite often, send ten-dollar words to do a ten-cent job. I mean, periphrastic? Really? Old Possum's not much better, and that was for kids.
Which leads me,in a periphrastic way, to James Joyce. I believe I have discovered the best method of reading Finnegan's Wake: think drunk. You don't have to be drunk, although this may help, but think drunk, as though you are in a pub, which is very appropriate, listening to many drunken conversations, or what passes for conversation among a pubfull of drunk Irishmen.
"What clashes here of wills gen wonts, oystrygods gaggin fishy-gods! Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax! Ualu Ualu Ualu! Quaouauh! Where the Baddelaries partisans are still out to mathmaster Malachus Micgranes and the Verdons cata-pelting the camibalistics out of the Whoyteboyce of Hoodie Head. Assiegates and boomeringstroms. Sod’s brood, be me fear! Sanglorians, save! Arms apeal with larms, appalling. Killykill-killy: a toll, a toll. What chance cuddleys, what cashels aired and ventilated! What bidimetoloves sinduced by what tegotetab-solvers! What true feeling for their’s hayair with what strawng voice of false jiccup! O here here how hoth sprowled met the duskt the father of fornicationists but, (O my shining stars and body!) how hath fanespanned most high heaven the skysign of soft advertisement! But was iz? Iseut? Ere were sewers? The oaks of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either shall the pharce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish."
Now, does that not sound like pissed prose from loose lips lubricated with . . .
This is the whisky part.
Writers Tears Irish Whiskey.
I discovered this in Dublin, a few years ago, when we stayed there a couple of nights after being in the beautiful Beara Peninsula for a week. Dublin, for me, was not much of a fair city, but this was when the GFC was making mockery of the Celtic Tiger. There were many unemployed people, and an air of discontent, but not in the Celtic Whisky Shop. It's down in Dawson St, not far from the National Library of Ireland, where we had wandered around the Yeats exhibition. There were many whiskies, but my eye was drawn to the Writers Tears, and I bought it.
Jim Murray gives it 93 points and says of it:
"A glossy pot still character: rather than the usual fruity firmness, the recognisable pot still traits are shrouded in soft honey tones which dovetail with lightening kumquat-citrus tones. Quite a curious, but always deliciously appealing animal. Works beautifully well: the arrival is an alternating delivery of soft and hard waves, the former showing a more bitter, almost myopic determination to hammer home its traditional pot still stand point; the sweeter more yielding notes dissolve with little or no resistance, leaving an acacia honeyed trail.."
What he means, deprived of reviewer speak, is that it slides down the throat like honeyed oil, like the kiss of your lover distilled, like the dew from the tree of life. You can get it in Australia, if you search a little.
Bye
Tuesday, 1 July 2014
The Universal Theory of Underwear
I have, through observation, developed a proposal of underwear. Ferlinghetti wrote a poem about it, title, not surprisingly, "Underwear." (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171600) I wrote a poem about underwear on a clothesline, somewhat inspired by Ferlinghetti, called "My Neighbour's Underwear," to which I can't give a link, because nobody thinks it's important enough to steal and put on-line. (sob)I won't inflict it upon my Gentle Readers here and now (the book it's in, Loser's Day is A$20, including postage, for Australians, and US$22 for our American cousins, £12 for those in the UK) except to say that it deals with underwear on a clothesline, which is part of the origin of my thesis.
You see, I have a method of hanging out clothes where the underwear goes on the smallest line, right in close to the spindle (and if you don't know what I'm talking about, look up "Hill's Hoist" on Wikipedia). I search through the washing basket to find all the underwear, because after I start hanging clothes on the other lines, it's inconvenient to go back to the little inside one; wet washing smacks you in the face.
I carefully search through the washing basket to find all the underwear, so that I can hang them up all at once, and then I hang up everything else, the jeans, the shirts, the kilts, the aprons, etc, beyond them. No matter how I search, there is always at least one piece of underwear that turns up later, forcing me back through the wet washing to hang it on the inside.
I know I could hang it on the outside, but, hell; a method is a method, and consistency is all. And no, I am not OCD; I just have this little method of hanging up washing.
Which leads me to enunciate the Universal Theory of Underwear: there is always another pair of knickers.
It's not only in hanging up the washing that I have observed the proof of this; when taking washing out of the clothes' basket to put into the washing machine, there will always be a pair of knickers lying at the bottom to creep out and wave its elastic at you when the machine has gone into its first cycle and the door cannot be opened. When I throw out old clothes, something which my wife insists I should do more often, there will always be a piece of underwear hiding in an inaccessible corner that jumps back out after I have taken everything down to the charity clothing bin. Generally, it's a black pair with elastic that has turned into a sort of drippy goo.
This is not only observed in the; out in the wild, you can often see knickers that have escaped domestication and returned to the wild of pub car parks on Sunday morning, or blowing along the sands of the beach, unoccupied and carefree. You can sometimes see them lurking in bushes after a neighbour's late-night party. They erupt onto stages at rock concerts (or Tom Jones, which is not the same thing, boyo, and I have applied for funding to do a statistical analysis of this phenomenon when the Rolling Stones come back to Perth in 2015. I am sure that there are more knickers thrown than can possibly emerge from the mosh pit.
This brings up a corollary of the Universal Theory of Underwear; how far can knickers be thrown? I intend to conduct a series of experiments, first in the laboratory, then in the wild. Knickers of different fabric, weight, cut etc. will be hurled from a small catapult with varying degrees of force, and the distance to where they land carefully measured. The next stage of the experiment is to engage volunteers to throw the knickers, and then to progress to in-situ experimentation, where a number of these same volunteers, at varying distances from the stage, bombard Mick 'n Keef with knickers at the concert, their accuracy and range carefully measured by telemetry.
And so science marches on! At the end of the universe, when the big crunch occurs, or the big stasis, or the heat death, there will be a pair of knickers peeping out from the ashes of a dead star, ready to begin the next big bang.
What does this have to do with whisky? The worst whisky I have ever tasted came from the island of Lombok, in Indonesia. I really can't remember the name, but I bought it out of curiosity, not really expecting a great deal from a whisky made on an island where Islam is the predominant religion. I was right to expect little of it. What I did not expect was just how little.
In Pompeii, one can see the laundry, where clothing was bleached using urine. Next to the door are the pots where people were invited to relieve themselves. By far the best urine for bleaching was camel urine, and it commanded quite a high price. Somehow those Lombok distillers had achieved a liquid which rivaled camel urine. It tasted like camel urine that had been strained through a crocodile's jockstrap, hence the connection with underwear. It was a wonder that it did not etch the bottle. It was so bad that I could not even try to drink more after the first sip, so I brought it home. I later used it to kill some weeds. It was far more effective than glycophosphate.
Next time I might talk about some good whisky.
Bye
You see, I have a method of hanging out clothes where the underwear goes on the smallest line, right in close to the spindle (and if you don't know what I'm talking about, look up "Hill's Hoist" on Wikipedia). I search through the washing basket to find all the underwear, because after I start hanging clothes on the other lines, it's inconvenient to go back to the little inside one; wet washing smacks you in the face.
I carefully search through the washing basket to find all the underwear, so that I can hang them up all at once, and then I hang up everything else, the jeans, the shirts, the kilts, the aprons, etc, beyond them. No matter how I search, there is always at least one piece of underwear that turns up later, forcing me back through the wet washing to hang it on the inside.
I know I could hang it on the outside, but, hell; a method is a method, and consistency is all. And no, I am not OCD; I just have this little method of hanging up washing.
Which leads me to enunciate the Universal Theory of Underwear: there is always another pair of knickers.
It's not only in hanging up the washing that I have observed the proof of this; when taking washing out of the clothes' basket to put into the washing machine, there will always be a pair of knickers lying at the bottom to creep out and wave its elastic at you when the machine has gone into its first cycle and the door cannot be opened. When I throw out old clothes, something which my wife insists I should do more often, there will always be a piece of underwear hiding in an inaccessible corner that jumps back out after I have taken everything down to the charity clothing bin. Generally, it's a black pair with elastic that has turned into a sort of drippy goo.
This is not only observed in the; out in the wild, you can often see knickers that have escaped domestication and returned to the wild of pub car parks on Sunday morning, or blowing along the sands of the beach, unoccupied and carefree. You can sometimes see them lurking in bushes after a neighbour's late-night party. They erupt onto stages at rock concerts (or Tom Jones, which is not the same thing, boyo, and I have applied for funding to do a statistical analysis of this phenomenon when the Rolling Stones come back to Perth in 2015. I am sure that there are more knickers thrown than can possibly emerge from the mosh pit.
This brings up a corollary of the Universal Theory of Underwear; how far can knickers be thrown? I intend to conduct a series of experiments, first in the laboratory, then in the wild. Knickers of different fabric, weight, cut etc. will be hurled from a small catapult with varying degrees of force, and the distance to where they land carefully measured. The next stage of the experiment is to engage volunteers to throw the knickers, and then to progress to in-situ experimentation, where a number of these same volunteers, at varying distances from the stage, bombard Mick 'n Keef with knickers at the concert, their accuracy and range carefully measured by telemetry.
And so science marches on! At the end of the universe, when the big crunch occurs, or the big stasis, or the heat death, there will be a pair of knickers peeping out from the ashes of a dead star, ready to begin the next big bang.
What does this have to do with whisky? The worst whisky I have ever tasted came from the island of Lombok, in Indonesia. I really can't remember the name, but I bought it out of curiosity, not really expecting a great deal from a whisky made on an island where Islam is the predominant religion. I was right to expect little of it. What I did not expect was just how little.
In Pompeii, one can see the laundry, where clothing was bleached using urine. Next to the door are the pots where people were invited to relieve themselves. By far the best urine for bleaching was camel urine, and it commanded quite a high price. Somehow those Lombok distillers had achieved a liquid which rivaled camel urine. It tasted like camel urine that had been strained through a crocodile's jockstrap, hence the connection with underwear. It was a wonder that it did not etch the bottle. It was so bad that I could not even try to drink more after the first sip, so I brought it home. I later used it to kill some weeds. It was far more effective than glycophosphate.
Next time I might talk about some good whisky.
Bye
Saturday, 28 June 2014
Early Whisky photographs
However, my involvement with Scotch whisky started well before I was given a store card. Way back when I was fifteen we moved from a gorgeous place in which we'd been living, up in Fairlight, with views over Bantry Bay, the northern part of Sydney Harbor and both North and South Heads, with a tiny little beach opposite the bay window where young women often sunbaked, something of great importance to a pubescent lad, and a vast,rambling garden populated by spiders and bullants, to a two-bedroom flat down in Manly, opposite Manly Oval. This move was caused by several things, but most notably the reappearance of Jack, who was my alleged stepfather. I say alleged because there is some doubt that mum and he ever actually went through the ceremony.
Jack had secured a job as bar manager at a local sailing club, a prime position for an alcoholic, and the flat was closer to work. It also separated us from my sister, who loathed Jack. She and her husband had been living up at Fairlight with us, but there was no room in the house for Jack. She moved to a flat only a flight of stairs away.
As bar manager, Jack had to take delivery of crates of booze, and they often turned up before the club opened for the day, so they came to our flat and were stacked in the kitchen. Now mum and Jack spent a lot of time at that club, him drinking and running the bar, her playing poker machines and running the kitchen. What can a poor boy do, when faced with a stack of cases of alcohol in the kitchen, left alone most nights of the week? Investigate ways of opening the cases and the bottles they contained.
This was in the days before untrusting souls put clever little tamper-proof seals around the necks of bottles. Old Smuggler was the easiest, because it only had some gold tinfoil crushed down onto the neck, and was sealed with a cork. They were 750 ml bottles - 26 fluid ounce as it was - so the removal of 50 ml of Scotch and its replacement with water diluted the Scotch to 34½% from 37%. People took their Scotch with ice or soda or water, so they never noticed the difference. At least, they never complained.
A case would give me 600 ml of Scotch, which I stored with the photographic chemicals in a little box. Anyone using the fixer would have been very surprised at the results. I used the bathroom as a darkroom, and spent many wonderful hours in there, developing photographs I'd taken with my Box Brownie, particularly after I'd been up to that beach opposite Fairlight.
It was not top-shelf stuff. Johnny Walker Red was okay, and still is. It was one of the tinfoil and cork sealed bottles in those days. Grants was a bit of a bugger, because it had a metal screw cap, but I worked out that a firm grip on the join as you unscrewed it forced the whole thing off, and it could be re-sealed with the back of a spoon. And then there was Usher's Green Stripe.
There are top-shelf whiskies, such as Johnny Walker Black (just to limit this to ordinary blended whiskies), and there are middle-shelf whiskies, such as Johnny Red or J&B, and bottom shelf whiskies, such as Black and White or, god help us, Corio Five-Star. And then there are those for which no shelf is quite low enough, and there you find Usher's. It redefined rotgut in a new and more sinister fashion. The nose was that of fermenting banana-leaves crossed with Roquefort cheese and sheep-shit,and the last may have been what was malted to create it. The taste was that of nail-polish remover cut with burnt coffee. Even to my novice palate, it was undrinkable.
For what purpose did the renowned club purchase this stuff? It was cheap, about half the price of Black and White or Vat 69, and it was alcoholic, somewhat more than the 37% of most blended whiskies. Well, Jack explained this to mum one day when he picked up a couple of cases to take to the club.
You see, at the end of the night, when only the dedicated drinkers were left to mutter into their glasses and miss the dartboard, they swapped the bottles in the dispensers. "Those bastards are too pissed to notice the difference," he said, with a vast, Tom Cruise, he had great dentures, smile. The Ushers would be poured into a more reputable bottle down in the cellar, brought up and placed in the inverted dispensers behind the bar, increasing the profits of both the club and liver surgeons.
But was this the worst whisky I have ever tasted? Possibly not, and that may provide the topic for another post.
Bye.
Jack had secured a job as bar manager at a local sailing club, a prime position for an alcoholic, and the flat was closer to work. It also separated us from my sister, who loathed Jack. She and her husband had been living up at Fairlight with us, but there was no room in the house for Jack. She moved to a flat only a flight of stairs away.
As bar manager, Jack had to take delivery of crates of booze, and they often turned up before the club opened for the day, so they came to our flat and were stacked in the kitchen. Now mum and Jack spent a lot of time at that club, him drinking and running the bar, her playing poker machines and running the kitchen. What can a poor boy do, when faced with a stack of cases of alcohol in the kitchen, left alone most nights of the week? Investigate ways of opening the cases and the bottles they contained.
This was in the days before untrusting souls put clever little tamper-proof seals around the necks of bottles. Old Smuggler was the easiest, because it only had some gold tinfoil crushed down onto the neck, and was sealed with a cork. They were 750 ml bottles - 26 fluid ounce as it was - so the removal of 50 ml of Scotch and its replacement with water diluted the Scotch to 34½% from 37%. People took their Scotch with ice or soda or water, so they never noticed the difference. At least, they never complained.
A case would give me 600 ml of Scotch, which I stored with the photographic chemicals in a little box. Anyone using the fixer would have been very surprised at the results. I used the bathroom as a darkroom, and spent many wonderful hours in there, developing photographs I'd taken with my Box Brownie, particularly after I'd been up to that beach opposite Fairlight.
It was not top-shelf stuff. Johnny Walker Red was okay, and still is. It was one of the tinfoil and cork sealed bottles in those days. Grants was a bit of a bugger, because it had a metal screw cap, but I worked out that a firm grip on the join as you unscrewed it forced the whole thing off, and it could be re-sealed with the back of a spoon. And then there was Usher's Green Stripe.
There are top-shelf whiskies, such as Johnny Walker Black (just to limit this to ordinary blended whiskies), and there are middle-shelf whiskies, such as Johnny Red or J&B, and bottom shelf whiskies, such as Black and White or, god help us, Corio Five-Star. And then there are those for which no shelf is quite low enough, and there you find Usher's. It redefined rotgut in a new and more sinister fashion. The nose was that of fermenting banana-leaves crossed with Roquefort cheese and sheep-shit,and the last may have been what was malted to create it. The taste was that of nail-polish remover cut with burnt coffee. Even to my novice palate, it was undrinkable.
For what purpose did the renowned club purchase this stuff? It was cheap, about half the price of Black and White or Vat 69, and it was alcoholic, somewhat more than the 37% of most blended whiskies. Well, Jack explained this to mum one day when he picked up a couple of cases to take to the club.
You see, at the end of the night, when only the dedicated drinkers were left to mutter into their glasses and miss the dartboard, they swapped the bottles in the dispensers. "Those bastards are too pissed to notice the difference," he said, with a vast, Tom Cruise, he had great dentures, smile. The Ushers would be poured into a more reputable bottle down in the cellar, brought up and placed in the inverted dispensers behind the bar, increasing the profits of both the club and liver surgeons.
But was this the worst whisky I have ever tasted? Possibly not, and that may provide the topic for another post.
Bye.
This is really a test to see if a blog works for me. I've tried before, but I tend to lose interest or, truth be told, feel as if I have little to say. But hell, don;t we all feel like that on the dreary days?
Since I've titled this blog Whisky Diary, I will try to include something about whisky in every post, even if it's only something as simple as wondering why the word processor suggests it should be spelled whiskey. As far as I know, that only applies to whiskies aren't Scotch.
Just checked; the label on the bottle of Dimple Haig, which is the spirit of the night, to almost pinch something from Phantom of the Opera, says it's whisky, so yah sucks boo to word processors which are supposed to be switched to English (UK) but which are secretly spreading United States cultural domination.
To go on a little about the Dimple Haig, I have a soft spot for it, particularly when it's on special at the local cheap grog shop, because it was one of my very earliest indulgences, way back when I was corrupted by my very first store card. I was a callow nineteen-year-old when some idiot gave me access to credit at a major department store. I say they were idiots, because, at that time, I wasn't, legally, an adult, and so could not sign a binding contract. My older sister had to sign it for me. Unfortunately, she left the country a couple of months later, and hasn't come back.
To give a teenager a credit card is often a mistake, and it was in my case. I tried to act responsibly, really I did, but when you have no income, access to a department store that sells food and booze is, quite literally, a life-saver. The unfortunate thing was that they only flogged high-end stuff, so it wasn't possible to buy a cheap bottle of Uncle MacBooger Scotch Whisky, aged three weeks in a sporran. No, they only had the good stuff, and Dimple Haig was one of their cheaper Scotches.
Thus the fondness for DH. I'm off now; have to mash the potatoes for the braised rabbit with mushrooms we're having for dinner.
Bye
Since I've titled this blog Whisky Diary, I will try to include something about whisky in every post, even if it's only something as simple as wondering why the word processor suggests it should be spelled whiskey. As far as I know, that only applies to whiskies aren't Scotch.
Just checked; the label on the bottle of Dimple Haig, which is the spirit of the night, to almost pinch something from Phantom of the Opera, says it's whisky, so yah sucks boo to word processors which are supposed to be switched to English (UK) but which are secretly spreading United States cultural domination.
To go on a little about the Dimple Haig, I have a soft spot for it, particularly when it's on special at the local cheap grog shop, because it was one of my very earliest indulgences, way back when I was corrupted by my very first store card. I was a callow nineteen-year-old when some idiot gave me access to credit at a major department store. I say they were idiots, because, at that time, I wasn't, legally, an adult, and so could not sign a binding contract. My older sister had to sign it for me. Unfortunately, she left the country a couple of months later, and hasn't come back.
To give a teenager a credit card is often a mistake, and it was in my case. I tried to act responsibly, really I did, but when you have no income, access to a department store that sells food and booze is, quite literally, a life-saver. The unfortunate thing was that they only flogged high-end stuff, so it wasn't possible to buy a cheap bottle of Uncle MacBooger Scotch Whisky, aged three weeks in a sporran. No, they only had the good stuff, and Dimple Haig was one of their cheaper Scotches.
Thus the fondness for DH. I'm off now; have to mash the potatoes for the braised rabbit with mushrooms we're having for dinner.
Bye
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