Drink
What's the one thing you could not drink if a lifetime's supply of free alcohol depended on it? Whatever you drank when you were 16. For me, it was cider. It was the only thing we had the courage to ask for at the local off-licence, which in itself should have given our age away. Down at the Brown Cow in Bingley we'd down it by the pint (I could manage three) in the company of the odd tame specimen from the boys' school before staggering up the road to Pizza Hut.
All this is on my mind because I am at home with my little brother for the weekend to administer some vital coaching in engineering and maths. My friend Sam theorises that, when it comes to early nurturing of alcoholic tastes, the culprits are the humble ice lolly and penny sweets. And it is true. Every day through the summer holiday I used to walk a quarter of a mile to the corner shop and return with two cider lollies wrapped in newspaper to stop them melting before I got home. One for me, one for mum. And look what happened.
There were some who drank snakebite and black - half lager, half cider with a dash of blackcurrant cordial - a taste no doubt developed from early weaning on Ribena. And at 17 I had a nasty experience with peach schnapps (even now I cannot bear to read the words "peach" and "schnapps" next to each other) that marked the threshold of my conversion to proper drinks. With this in mind, it is no wonder alcopops have proved so popular among the young. So perhaps the burgeoning confectionery industry might also be to blame for the state of my little brother's bedroom.
I am alarmed by what I find. His bedroom resembles a quaintly well-stocked 1970s bar. It is a veritable emporium of the unwanted, the indigestible and the frankly revolting. As befits a 16 year old.
Space has been cleared between the All Saints posters and the salvaged bits of Colin McRae's rally car to proudly display: two bottles of creme de menthe (one homemade decanted into a dusty old wine bottle), one bottle of Polish vodka (87.6 per cent vol), some sort of green liqueur called Kiwi Wonder, brandy miniatures, anisette de Bordeaux, cherry brandy, rum and something called Mather's black beer concentrated malt liquor.
I turn pale at the sight. "Do you drink these?" I ask in some horror. "Yeah," he brazens defensively. Then starts shuffling. "Well, I used to a bit but I can't be bothered now. But they look good, don't they?" They look horrible, like the fruits of a lifetime's devotion to wacky holiday purchases. There is no way on earth I could be prevailed upon to try any of them.
By the end of a long day of Boyle's law, quadratic equations and angles of friction, I am desperate for a drink. "Go make me a gin and tonic," I instruct. I am so tired I can barely cook dinner. Unfortunately, since he was given a cocktail shaker my brother has been behaving like Tom Cruise in Cocktail meets Amazonian witch doctor. Sometimes it's a blessing, sometimes it's, well, not. When he reappears wielding what appears to be a glass of orange juice, my disappointment knows no bounds. "What's this?" "Try it and see," he threatens, relinquishing it with a flourish. I take a sip. It tastes like one of the worst concoctions from the Park Lane Hilton's Trader Vic's, a wonderfully ridiculous Caribbean-themed cocktail bar. I identify orange juice and rum, definitely, but I can tell that a lot more ingredients lurk. I don't want to ask what they might be.
"Gin and tonic, now," I order firmly, reflecting that it could be worse. This craze has the potential to develop into a really useful service.
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