Pubs eh. Not the same. I like pubs. Those that remain. The pubs of my youth, no food but crisps, crowded, noisy with the sound of talk, not televisiona and piped music. Cigarette smoke pooling in the ceiling, cigarette packets out on the table. Carpets to stick to. A landlady who shook the walls when she shouted time. Pubs in back streets, pubs on housing estates, pubs on corners, pubs standing alone on old bomb sites. I cannot give you a cocktail recipe.

I am in a pub.

Cocktail Number 1

Mostly for me.
But gather round and read it if you wish.
I want to practise my writing, and a blog is such an excellent discipline. There are so many out there I admire (more of which later). I have always kept diaries, and written stories and poems, and started novels, and scratched thoughts in notebooks on the train. But a blog forces you to think about an audience; even if it be an audience of one. Forces you to take care, and craft, and be interesting. So here it is. Here is my bar, and I am behind it. Come on in, and while I serve you the most bewilderingly delicious cocktails known to humankind, I will tell you some stories, and share some thoughts, and have a rant, and reminisce; and you can join in if you like.

Open for business

Lovely to be back. And thanks for popping in. Don't ask where I have been for two years; maybe I did get that invite to that party after all. Anyway, the shutters are open again, and everything has been swept up and wiped down, the steel tables are softly gleaming under their little low lights, Carin is at her usual seat, playing patience and acting like she's all alone.

Sit down, no your not having the usual, this one's on me. This one's called a Moulin Rouge, and I want use these glasses that I picked up while I was away. Beautiful aren't they. Nineteenth century crystal. Get that cracked ice into the shaker, then a glug of gin, a couple of drops of apricot brandy, a squeeze of lemon and a couple of drops of grenadine. Put the lid on and shake. Look at that delicious orange colour pouring into the champagne glass; the colour of the dresses of the young dancers in the Moulin Rouge. Right, top up with sparkling wine; and there you are my friend. Sip as though you have come from your garrett, and are using your last centimes on this before going back to wrestle with your dark poetry. And be careful with that glass.

Green Hat

Do you only start appreciating walking once you get past the age of 30? Reading must have some of the best walking around it you could possibly get; in the gentle stroll in the gentle countryside sort of way. Not the rugged, risk-life-and-limb sort of way. I have just come back from a two-day walk along the Thames Path in South Oxfordshire. The weather was glowering and damp, and the Thames slow and fat. It is so Wind in the Willows in that part of the world, so Tales of the Riverbank. Willows hang aslant a stream all the way along, and there are beguiling glimpses of beautiful boathouses, locked up against the next time their, doubtless lovely, owners come for a weekend on the river. And narrowboats pootle up and down, and the beer is welcome and conscience-free, because, after all, you have just walked five miles. And wherever you go, you can always see Didcot power station.

I believe it is strangely reminiscent of the landscape in medieval England, when this part of Berkshire and Oxfordshire must have been dominated by abbeys and churches, from the huge Reading Abbey to Wallingford and Dorchester and Oxford, you would simply see the next abbey or cathedral on the horizon as you walked from one place to the next. Now it is an all-together different power that dominates.

Anyway enough of that tortured analogy. Why do walkers wear such silly clothes? You'll be wanting a Green Hat. I'll just get this goblet out of the freezer where I have been saving it nicely. See look how it mists up straight away; chuck in some nice chunky ice, one glug of gin, and then about same glug of creme de menthe, watch the green liquid spread slowly in the gin; stir it to help  it mix; top up with sparkling soda water; pop in a straw and enjoy.

Dry Martini

Let's start with the classic. In real life I have never known anybody who likes it the way they say it should be in the books. That you should just show the glass the Martini bottle, and then pour neat, chilled gin over the single ice cube and olive, with the glass rim run around with a lemon slice. Lets face it. That is just neat gin. No wonder the old books on etiquette say you should not have more than two in an evening. Cocktail parties in the fifties, people must have been off their faces. And James Bond. How did he manage to be shaken and not stirred after one of those. That explains the icy nerve then, he was just too stilettoed to care what was going on. "I love you Moneypenny, you're the best friend I've got"

Martini adverts from the sixties and seventies famously sold us the bright lights and glamour of drinking vermouth. It worked for me for years. I really thought that somewhere out there there were people who partied on the top of castles, after arriving by hot air balloon. After years of searching I now know the depressing truth. There are people out there who party on the top of castles after arriving by hot air balloon. But they are never going to invite me to their parties.

So. Here it is. Two parts gin; one part martini (still too strong for some) in a cocktail shaker over crushed ice; shake (don't stir) and pour over an ice cube in a classic v shaped glass, and add one olive, and lemon if wanted.

Welcome to my cocktail bar, and cheers.