Drink
I was having a conversation with a friend. That is, I thought it was a conversation. He said I had been interviewing him for the past hour and a half. He's doing a PhD on violence and crime in Britain in the 19th century. I wanted to know whether he might succeed in transporting his intellectual theories out of the ivory tower and into the nitty-gritty of the real world.
And I thought that, in spite of the moral paucity of my own subject, cocktails, I ought to get down to grass roots. So we invited some friends round one sticky midsummer evening, to admire the slithering frogs in the algae-covered puddle that my latest love likes to call his pond, and to drink. Grass roots means the simplest of cocktails, Pimm's No 1 - so simple it's scarcely a cocktail, more of a drink - and it means that my latest love has to prepare it himself.
It's not difficult, yet it immediately becomes clear that the route between the theory (how to make it) and real life (drinking it from the glass) is not going to be the gentle country ramble I had predicted. Our journey will be bedevilled by the gaping ravines of "Whichglass"; we will scramble uncertainly on sliding screes of "Whatgarnish"; and we will almost lose our heads as we scale the peaks of "Whatproportions".
I begin by luring my latest love into the kitchen and presenting him with a bottle of Pimm's. He blanches. "I don't know how to do it," he wails, struggling for the safety of the garden, restrained only by my glacial stare. His friend Nigel takes pity on him by reading the instructions from the bottle.
Cups, of which Pimm's is one, lie at the heart of English summer drinking. The Stirrup Cup (ingredients: cherry brandy, brandy, lemon and sugar) used to be given to thirsty hunters and departing travellers requiring rapid refreshment. Traditionally served in a glass with a long stem and a knob instead of a base, the contents had to be finished before the glass could be set down. Hence the phrase "in his cups", which, at the end of the second millennium, we would probably replace with "lagered up".
Pimm's was first served in the 1840s in the City bar of one James Pimm. Its recipe is a carefully guarded secret to which, according to the bottle, only six living souls are privy. But it doesn't matter because it's quite easy to make once you've got it from the supermarket. "Three measures of lemonade to one of Pimm's," Nigel instructs firmly, chivvying my latest love towards the Dr White's in the fridge. I thought better not to mention at this crucial moment that I sometimes make it up with tonic for a brisker, drier drink. Or that red martini can be substituted to make a poor man's Pimm's.
It seems like a lifetime, but it can be only seconds later that my latest love, helped by Nigel and hindered by his preference for tiny, chichi lemonade cans in lieu of sensible bottles, has succeeded in pouring the correct proportions of pop and alcohol into a jug. We almost applaud. But the moment of grand reckoning is still to come. I tell him to put the ice cubes into the individual glasses and not the jug, otherwise the Pimm's will just get flat and watery.
"I can't do the garnish," moans my latest love. "You're bound to have a particular way of doing it." I do. I can't bear drinks littered with the flotsam of anaemic fruit salad. The important bits here are the cucumber - specifically the pared rind (it always looks more chic), though I don't mind a thin slice - and the mint. Without these you may as well not even embark on the mission. I always enjoy half a slice of juicy orange, too, but no more. Again, these should be put in the glass and not the jug.
We have cocktails. "I've done it," gasps my latest love.
"You just keep reiterating that," snaps my friend Sarah. "We might actually begin to believe it."
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