Write on spirits

Famously, Laurie Lee, one of the nation’s most beloved novelists, wrote ‘on wine’.  Whether or not he was ever drunk in charge of a typewriter is unclear but one has to entertain the possibility that, as a poet, he typed without due care and attention.  He did his writing in the Greek Islands, presumably because in the days before bargain booze, affordable New World wines or even Blue Nun, this was the only way he could become sufficiently inebriated to welcome the Muse should she come to visit.  Also, proximity to Mt Parnassus may have helped.

Rock stars smoke, inject, inhale and presumably occasionally insert for inspiration.  Writers drink.  Christ alone knows why, as excessive booze normally leads to feelings of alienation from the world and a profound sense of being under-appreciated and misunderstood, all of which is achievable through the simple act of publishing a slim volume of verse.  Alcohol also inhibits early morning creativity, and certain writers famously were at their creative peak at first light.  Presumably this meant they could post the latest chapter of their novel off to their publishers at eleven in the morning on their way to the pub.

However, in the spirit of enquiry G&P is embarking on a five-part special to explore the effects of various types of alcohol on writing, beyond those of not being able to remember that fantastic idea for a novel you had last night (something about a boy wizard?) just before you passed out, or not being able to decipher the notes scrawled on a beermat that could be a poem, or somebody’s e mail address.

We continue with…spirits.

Shall we mention ghost stories?  Let’s not.

Shall we mention Hemmingway?  Earnest, not Wayne.  Well, there’s a school of thought that spirits make one mean, and certainly EM appeared to have it in for bulls, fish, Big Game and many of God’s creatures that had never harmed him, but are we to blame that all on spirits?  Let’s not.

Spirits are a man’s drink.  Ignore those adverts that come on at Christmas featuring a girl in a glittery frock with a tumbler of some brownish liquid.  This is a game, but ultimately doomed, attempt to extend spirits sales past the saturated male market to women.  Does that advert also have the same woman, with perfect lipstick, pulling on a thick cigar?  Thought so, the famous and famously successful advertising company of Malefantasy and Wankjet (London, New York, Pontypool) strikes again.  The only spirit women drink is vodka, and that’s only because the makers of cranberry juice really, really know how to market that stuff.

No, spirits equal men.  Spirits, ingested, throw everything into sharp relief, including emotions.  That’s why gin makes women sad and why scotch, and any other spirit, at all, makes men angry.  The drinker of spirits writes about manly stuff.  Spies, war, sports, and of course, drinking.

The spirit drinker, one feels, is above all an adventurer.

Spirits are ideal when travelling to places where you need to take the maximum amount of drinkable alcohol for the minimum encumbrance.  When the first man lands on Mars, he’ll have scotch with him (this is after Scotland gains independence and launches a hilariously ambitious, but surprising successful, space programme).  If you need to go further, faster, spirits are your friend.

The same goes with drinking them.  If you don’t have time to faff around with beer, or enjoying your drink by droning on endlessly about the complexities of the nose, as you do with wine, then reach for the hard stuff.

Because drinking spirits is not enjoyable.  If it was, mixers wouldn’t exist.

Spirits also bring, as aforementioned, and depending on the spirit in question, a certain clarity of thought.

Gin.  Instant Hogarthian and Dickensian purity, being able to describe with absolute clarity the cruddy undersole of the human condition, be it sociatial or personal.

Vodka.  Ah, vodka.  The easy association would be with Russian novels so thick they look like normal novels that have fallen into the bath.  And that’s about right.  Always, always be suspicious of any alcohol that is clear.  Rule of thumb, if it looks like you could clean spark plugs with it, avoid ingesting it.

Bourbon.  Interestingly, not actually a drink in and of itself.  Bourbon is Scotch and sweetness, like the classic cocktail of Scotch and Irn Bru.  Bourbon is one of those wonderful drinks that foreigners make.  It’s like one of those ‘fuLl engliSH breaKFasts’ that you see advertised on Greek island tavernas, with an image of the Full English that the attempt on your plate bears little resemblance to.  The genius of bourbon production is this; just as Scotch is named for a geographical area which enables the purchaser to build brand loyalty based on faux clan association, so naming your beverage after a backwoods hillbilly, Confederate general or similar will enable your customers to decide whether they are Daniels or Beam, without realising that because of the amount of sugary syrup added to the booze required to make the muck drinkable, they are all Colas.

Scotch.  The associations are largely positive.  Spies (of the right sort).  Men with the right sort of beard.  The sort of chap who has an estate in the Highlands and who vacates London during August.

In fact Scotch is the only spirit to write on, and to read on.  Picture an author with a tumbler of scotch by his (lady authors are also available) side.  Pull back.  Typewriter?  Helicopter extract?  Very possibly, and more importantly, possibly not just on the page.

Spirits, never in the form of ‘shorts’ which in any civilized society are never a measure of alcohol and only ever the apparel of adolescent schoolboys, but rather served as the more manly ‘large one’, are also the preferred drink, or ‘lunch’, as the technical term has it, of journalists.  In particular, whisky is the go-to drink of foreign correspondents.  This is because it not only helps them blot out any horrors of war they may encounter, but, back in the day when wars had not yet migrated to the dusty arsehole of the world where people didn’t drink (hence: war), whisky was currency.  Apparently during the 1970s, it was standard practice to produce at any border crossing, in this order; a litre of Johnny Walker, a carton of 200 fags, your passport, your press credentials.

Single malt may be the tipple of choice for fiction writers and for heroic explorers who publish bestselling accounts of their travels (possibly posthumously).  For the journalist though, it has to be whisky and for the epitome of the journalist, the foreign correspondent, it has to be Johnny Walker, named for the famous Radio 2 DeeJay.  Classy.

Of course, today, a foreign correspondent today is more likely to be holed up in Costa sipping latte, weaving a story out of unsubstantiated tweets and blog posts, Wiki entries and Google Earth snapshots than actual reportage.

Write on beer

Famously, Laurie Lee, one of the nation’s most beloved novelists, wrote ‘on wine’.  Whether or not he was ever drunk in charge of a typewriter is unclear but one has to entertain the possibility that, as a poet, he typed without due care and attention.  He did his writing in the Greek Islands, presumably because in the days before bargain booze, affordable New World wines or even Blue Nun, this was the only way he could become sufficiently inebriated to welcome the Muse should she come to visit.  Also, proximity to Mt Parnassus may have helped.

Rock stars smoke, inject, inhale and presumably occasionally insert for inspiration.  Writers drink.  Christ alone knows why, as excessive booze normally leads to feelings of alienation from the world and a profound sense of being under-appreciated and misunderstood, all of which is achievable through the simple act of publishing a slim volume of verse.  Alcohol also inhibits early morning creativity, and certain writers famously were at their creative peak at first light.  Presumably this meant they could post the latest chapter of their novel off to their publishers at eleven in the morning on their way to the pub.

However, in the spirit of enquiry G&P is embarking on a five-part special to explore the effects of various types of alcohol on writing, beyond those of not being able to remember that fantastic idea for a novel you had last night (something about a boy wizard?) just before you passed out, or not being able to decipher the notes scrawled on a beermat that could be a poem, or somebody’s e mail address.

We continue with…beer.

I am writing this in the pub.  It’s actually called ‘The Red Lion’, which might give an insight into the sort of place it is, at three o’clock on a weekday afternoon, which might give you an indication of my commitment to my research.  Pubs off hours are very different to pubs when civilians (those who drink at Christmas/anyone who orders a Guinness last when getting a round in) frequent them.  They are communities.  The barmaid (who doesn’t know me, I hasten to add, I’m not rich enough to make a habit of this) asked me how I was?  OK, this may be barcraft 101 but it’s also a loaded question.  I’m in a pub at three in the afternoon, chances are things may not be going well (I will need many drinks) or I am celebrating something (many, many drinks, you’re not found ‘not guilty’ every day).  Actually, I see why she asked.

It’s also got a priests hole, and once upon a time there would have been a humorous sign, but Yewtree has fucked that for us as well.

The drink of choice is Stella Artois.  If ever there was an advertising Big Lie, Stella is a prime example of it.  Marketed as posh lager, it even comes, Belgian style, served in its own glass, a goblet style thing.  Anyone who is familiar with this beer knows that it should indeed be served in its own drinking vessel, but that this should be a plastic pint glass.  Stella, you see, has a reputation for turning people into aggressive nutters.

So what should one write on Stella?  Well, I am typing one handed while I make notes for a series of books that will be written under the pen-name of ‘Jack Stroud’ and will follow the fortunes of the males of the ‘Fret’ family as they fight in every war since..,let’s see, yes, the English Civil War.  Titles so far include ‘Royal Fret’, ‘Fret in Tartan’, ‘Fret at the Front’, ‘Frontline Fret’, ‘Fret and the Ruby’, ‘Fret Pulls It Off’, ‘Fret of the Artic’, ‘Fret of the Antarctic’, ‘Fret of the Falklands’, ‘Frantic Fret’, ‘The Fret Files’ (short stories) and, of course, ‘Fret with Wings’ (possibly featuring a female Fret).

Obviously, these will take off (especially the last one).  At that point, I employ an army of ghost writers and project the story of the Fret family backwards, as the Fret family take on the French, the Dutch, the Romans and the Vikings.

A movie adaptation you say?  Ha!  Remember, I’ve been drinking.  Stick your movie option up your arse, along with your assertion that this entire idea is predicated on the plot line from the Forrest Gump movie that every male in Lieutenant Dan’s family line had fought and died in some conflict.

I’m thinking…cut out and dress doll line.  Right?  Right?  Remember those 2D dolls you used to get in the back of magazines, with cut out clothes and tabs and so on?  Well, how about a Fret…but with loads of uniforms, it would be a cross between a really crap and outdated effort to keep kids quiet and a cutting edge publishing phenomenon and, here’s the kicker, it would be fucking useless on Kindle, unless Kindle comes with a printer.

Also, I’d market the cut out and keep doll and costumes with a colouring book and crayons and bundle it with the latest book in the Fret series, subtitled ‘Last of the Frets’ but titled in Great Britain ‘Fucking Fret!’ and in the US or any other country that doesn’t speak English properly ‘Fret’s annoyed’.  The plot is, er, just like the other plots, Fret has a hard time in some conflict, considers leaving, thinks on his family, rediscovers his courage and fucks somebody over with a rusty bayonet that belonged to his grandfather, or a pottery shard that a distant relative left buried in the sand, or in the side of an enemy also buried in the sand…

…details are unimportant.  What’s important is that the story involves Fret, this Fret, finding a diary from a Fret, that Fret, who fought in some previous war that, and here we go, not only gives him the courage to fight on, but actually reveals a hidden path to outflank the enemy.

Fuckin’ YEA!  This is going to be the first colouring book ever to win a BAFTA.  Did I type BAFTA, I mean Booker.  Fuck it, they need to invent a new category of BAFTA, or merge them, the first BOOFTA winner is, me!

So.  That’s beer then.  I suspect bitter might, paradoxically, inspire one to write something bucolic, possibly involving a bicycle and a clergyman, maybe even a crime thriller. But lager?  Lager is a war story in a glass.  Goblet.  Plastic beaker.  Whatever.

Write on white

Famously, Laurie Lee, one of the nation’s most beloved novelists, wrote ‘on wine’.  Whether or not he was ever drunk in charge of a typewriter is unclear but one has to entertain the possibility that, as a poet, he typed without due care and attention.  He did his writing in the Greek Islands, presumably because in the days before bargain booze, affordable New World wines or even Blue Nun, this was the only way he could become sufficiently inebriated to welcome the Muse should she come to visit.  Also, proximity to Mt Parnassus may have helped.

Rock stars smoke, inject, inhale and presumably occasionally insert for inspiration.  Writers drink.  Christ alone knows why, as excessive booze normally leads to feelings of alienation from the world and a profound sense of being under-appreciated and misunderstood, all of which is achievable through the simple act of publishing a slim volume of verse.  Alcohol also inhibits early morning creativity, and certain writers famously were at their creative peak at first light.  Presumably this meant they could post the latest chapter of their novel off to their publishers at eleven in the morning on their way to the pub.

However, in the spirit of enquiry G&P is embarking on a five-part special to explore the effects of various types of alcohol on writing, beyond those of not being able to remember that fantastic idea for a novel you had last night (something about a boy wizard?) just before you passed out, or not being able to decipher the notes scrawled on a beermat that could be a poem, or somebody’s e mail address.

We being with…white wine.

White wine suits poets.  It’s bucolic.  It’s also, these days (as Stewart Lee would say) bloody strong.  Back in the day, there’s a chance that Laurie Lee was drinking something delicious, refreshing, good with fish and not terribly alcoholic.  So, a couple of glasses with lunch and then crank out a few thousand words of gorgeous literature, then a nap.  Great.  The poets of today do not have it so easy.  White wine is literary rocket fuel, in that all the action happens very quickly and in a very short space of time.  First sip, feel inspiration tingle, middle third of glass, burst of creativity, bottom third of glass, decision time.  Second glass, your day’s work is over.  The only major literary decision you are going to make for the rest of the day is trying to get the password on your Majestic account right to order another crate of the stuff.

The thing about white wine is this, it’s an event in a glass.  It should be served chilled, cold enough to disguise the fact that you are serving your guests the £3.99 special with notes of grass and petrol.  This should chill the glass, resulting in that race to the bottom before it gets warm that only The Queen is immune to (special gloves, liver like a…well, liver like a monarch rather than a weak and feeble woman).  Glasses of white wine look especially good when placed next to manual typewriters.  The portions are these:

A bottle of white wine in the afternoon – poets

A carafe of white wine – novelists

A glass of white wine – readers and people who think that they have something fresh to write about vampires.

Alcohol, of course, is famous for allowing one to overcome one’s inhibitions.  To this extent, the reveal of the true self, one wonders if Dr Jekyll’s formula was actually: gin.  But if employed by the author, white wine, very much the perky, sharp, slightly noisome friend/fiend in the bottle, can be beneficial.

It’s summer.  Bees drone, lawnmowers drone, drones, well, buzz, which is odd, because bees also buzz, and some bees are drones, but few if any bees carry cameras.

OK, I’ve had a glass of wine.  That’s the rule.  Drink while you write.  I don’t make the rules, apart from this one.

Oh, and fank thuck for spelllcheck.

Right.  It’s summer, cows moo, bees drone and the poet or novelist is in his or her shed.  It’s too hot to write, it’s too hot to think.  Cotton is sticking to buttock in a way that is more uncomfortable than alluring.  Then.  Sandwiches and a glass of white wine.

The inspiration flows.  The verse is conjured, the stanzas flow.  The plot thickens as the characters develop, maybe one of the characters has a glass of wine and a ham sandwich.  I would read that book.

Cold white wine is a shock to the system, it’s invigorating.  It opens up a world of wonder and excitement and here’s why authors really, really love it, it leaves us wanting more.

Associated with: spy novel, novels about the Napoleonic war, poetry about hedges, anything to do with sport (grass notes), anything to do with the sea (great with fish), any author who writes 250 words a day.  Literary lunches.  Literary launches.

White wine is very much a summer drink, while glorious halcyon days may be bad for creativity, who needs inspiration when you have condensation beading on the outside of the glass?  After a second glass it’s time to put away the typewriter, and Google the reviews of your last book, after a third, the real work of the afternoon, going on Amazon under an assumed name and reviewing/shitting all over the latest offering from that wanker who called your last effort ‘disappointing’.

Finally, white wine is the only drink on the planet whose character is wholly unchanged by being served in a plastic receptacle.  At a literary festival?  Don’t know what to order?  Let me tell you what’s going to be delicious, refreshing and pleasingly cool in the hand in a sweaty marquee in a summer in the Shires.  Served from a box?  Oh, OK.

You'll have had your tea

Myths persist for three reasons.

Firstly, repetition.  Repeat something often enough and it will gain, if not credibility, then at least popularity or even notoriety.  The great thing about the repetition of a myth is that it can be done by people who have not even heard the original source material, but wish to confirm something in a manner that indicates they are privy to information others are not.  For instance 'I hear the Pope has six toes on each foot'.  'Ooooh, yes, I heard that too.' and so on.

Secondly, the myth is something we want to believe.  Alien life visiting our planet and fumbling with yokels' trouser parts is a far more interesting belief to hold than, say, we are alone in the universe and even if alien life did visit, it wouldn't try to touch us up because we are such a repellant species.

Thirdly, it's credible.  There could be an undiscovered creature living in the Himalayas.  There could be a dinosaur swimming in Loch Ness.  Haggis is a Highland creature.

The fabled 'Pyramid of haggis'.  

If there's a better way to display tinned haggis, it's yet to be invented.

Let's be quite clear, haggis is not an animal found in the Highlands of Scotland, it's a mixture of offal and meat, like a big spicy sausage.  If the haggis were an animal, I would imagine that it would not come in a vegetarian option.  I may not be a qualified vet, but I'm not aware of any animals that are actually vegetables.

Haggis does however, taste exactly like the meat of an animal that lives a very rough life in the Highlands of Scotland, subsisting on a diet of heather, rain, granite and the occasional lost hiker.  If Haggis were an animal, then hunting season would be early January (of course they're hunted in the wild, whoever heard of intensive haggis farming?), to adorn the plates of diners on Burns Night.

Robert Burns's verse on the side of the Scotish Parliament building.  

If you're verse adorns the side of a Parliament building, you are a national treasure...

or possibly a little sod with a spray can who styles himself a 'graffiti artist'.

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, arguably Scotland's greatest poet.  Arguably the United Kingdom's greatest poet if you consider having the poet's verses reproduced on tea towels as a measure of fame.  Without doubt the worlds greatest poet if you measure fame by having a dinner named after you - take that Shakespeare, Thomas and Yeats.

It's Burns Night tonight.  All over the country people will be dusting off their best tartan biscuit tin, downloading a verse or two from the Internet, calling potatoes 'tatties' and using the celebration of the birth of a gret poet to drink a lot of scotch.

There is, apparently, a right way to partake of a Burns supper.  This involves, depending on your means, a piper, or some recorded pipe music (bag, not pan).  It also involves many, many toasts and an address to the haggis which is, apparently, the great chieftain of the pudding race (coming as a surprise to all those who thought that was rolly polly and custard).

This example of Scottish cuisine can be enjoyed any night of the year.

The problem is when you enjoy it every night of the year.

It's also the one day a year when Scottish cuisine is enjoyed.  The rest of the year Scottish cuisine is merely feared and respected in equal measure.  The world over, people eat traditional Scottish fare, neeps, tatties and of course haggis.  Well, let's be honest, people eat what they think is traditional Scottish fare.  If people were tucking into traditional Scottish fare then, in my experience, dinner tables would largely feature a double portion of chips liberally soaked with saltandsauce, washed down with Irn Brew.

It's easy to knock Scottish cooking.  And it's fun too.
And unfair.  I bloody love Scottish cooking and I think it's wrong that it gets ridiculed.  True, Scottish people do like hearty food, leaning towards the meaty, and well cooked.  Stews, mince and flat sausage all pander to the 'if it's brown, wolf it down' sensibilities of the Scottish palate but it's unfair to knock exotic items like the deep fried mars bar - if Heston had come up with that, it would be hailed as a work of genius and possibly even 'witty'.
Certainly, I'll be tucking into my haggis and probably partaking of a dram or two.  Cliche?  Possibly, but also an opportunity to toast the great man who wrote 'my love is like a red red rose' and 'Tam O'Shanter', poetry which, like Scottish cuisine, deserves celebration.

Frost at midnight

Laudanum loving scribe Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a fabulous poem titled 'Frost at midnight' which begins with the enchanting phrase 'The frost performs its secret ministry'. It goes on to describe how his son will have opportunities that Coleridge never had when he himself was growing up, such as looking up at a clear sky, and, presumably, ready access to laudanum, very much the calpol of the romantic era, but concludes once more with a reference to the ministry of frost.

If there were a Ministry of Frost, one imagines that it would have been busy earlier in the year, when a succession of hard frosts resulted in a number of sporting fixtures being called off. Horse racing is always being called off when the going shifts from 'firm' to 'iron'. It's a dangerous sport at the best of times but on a frosty morn the only way to make it more dangerous would be to actually jump the horses into the intake of a roaring jet engine. Football too suffers cancellations, both in the Premiershit, and at a more local level, as evidenced by the sight of an optimistic but disconsolate boy returning from the park where Little League had been abandoned that morning, sullenly booting a plastic bottle along the pavement.

If one were to work in the public sector, currently it seems subject to more strikes than championship evening at 'Lanes of Glory Bowlarama', then the Ministry of Frost seems like a pretty good place to do so. It conjures the image of a government department that was originally established to officially declare the Thames safe for a frost fair (done by driving a horse and cart across the river - history does not record what happened to the 'looks like it needs another day' attempts but one suspects that they did not result in a short but harrowing public information film advising children not to drive horses and carts across rivers) and later went on to approve the frost patterns that would be etched across windows, which is still housed in a magnificent Victorian building and where the staff have very little to do during May to September, unless they are attached to the Scottish office.

The secret Ministry is also strongly evocative of John Steed turning up for work and foiling an enemy plot using nothing more than charm and a super-vixen side kick specialising in mixed martial arts. Because while queues grow at Heathrow and people wait for up to three hours to enter Britain, it's still true that while the public sector has of late got a bit bolshie and struck, there are still certain roles that one simply cannot imagine the private sector undertaking. Spying is one of them, if James Bond worked for Group 4 the world would be a glowing cinder ruled by a nutter in the sole remaining undersea volcano base.

As for queues at Heathrow, anyone who has queued for one of the more popular rides at Alton Towers will know that three hours is a doddle, and at Alton Towers you are actually queuing to get on a ride that will throw you about, instil genuine terror, make you wonder about the safety of the thing and leave you feeling sweaty with anxiety, at least at Heathrow you have just got off something that left you like that and you can have a drink and a weep in the queue. Other airports are available although 'Cardiff, gateway to the Games' is a bit of a stretch.

Other fabulous private sector queuing experiences include Clinton Cards. While the last thing anyone needs is another high street chain going under, one does have to wonder about a business model that appeared to consist of having two bored teens talk to one another at the till while studiously ignoring the queue of customers to the extent that it provokes an existential crisis in the more insecure. Possibly the source of apparent indifference is bitterness based around selling thousands of valentine's cards but never receiving one, because Cupid would need an aim like Robin bloody Hood and shoot rohypnol tipped arrows to make the average Clinton's shop assistant a romantic object.

Cherry blossom

Sage sorts with a flower bed full of soil under their fingernails advise that the current riot of colour in the gardens, parks and hedgerows is down to the cold Winter we had. After snow, frost and rain Spring has finally come and mother nature has decided to strut her stuff.

This is especially evident in the cherry blossom, which appears to have flowered in the time it takes one to make a cuppa. One moment there will be a bare tree, you turn your back, hear a faint popping noise and then turn back to see a cloud has apparently sprouted where the tree used to be.

However, this being Spring, the cloud is then blown by a fresh wind and, before you have time to fiddle with the settings on your camera, you’re left looking at the collection of sticks that is a cherry blossom tree in its natural state.

This, I am now convinced, is why the haiku is the preferred verse form of the Japanese, where these sorts of trees adorned the landscape as well as plates and bowls. The Japanese scribe would look at the tree and barely have time to dash off three lines before – poof – the blossom is gone for another year.

The more permanent bed of geraniums, daffodils or hardy perennials ensured that the English verse form tended towards the sonnet or even epic, essentially something one could spend a few weeks perfecting, without fear of any great change.

There must be an ode to a lawn somewhere.