Martin Fone's Blog, page 209

Gin O’Clock – Part Eighty Six

[image error]

The power of the ginaissance is such that distillers have to be
imaginative to ensure that their product muscles its way into the consciousness
of gin lovers. One way is to do it by the design of your bottle, another is to
have a good back story for the gin and a third is to have an unusual flavour
combination. Perhaps master distiller, Meindert Kampen, is being greedy because
he seems to have ticked all three boxes with his Black Tomato Gin.

The gin is distilled at the Kampen Distillery in Zeeland in the
Netherlands and comes in a rather dumpy 50cl bottle with a black matt finish
and a dark red, almost maroon cap, suggestive of a black tomato, and an
artificial cork stopper. It is certainly distinctive in size and colour. There
is a dark red label at the front with a picture of a black tomato. The words “Dutch,
quality, premium, gin” are embossed on the shoulder of the bottle and the
label at the back raves about the qualities of these tomatoes; “full of
nuances of merlot, salt, and citrus, with robust, tangy firmness. Dark fruits
with rich, sweet, dynamic flavour and a smoky note”. There is no
mention of any other flavours or botanicals, it is all about the black tomato.
The rear label did inform me that mine was bottle number 2,377 from Batch 24.   

Black tomatoes are not everybody’s cup of tea but aficionados
claim that they are the best tasting of all, turning a bluey-black on ripening
and with deep, blood red flesh inside. They are also stacked full of
anthocyanin, the same antioxidant you find in the likes of blueberries and
blackberries. It may not come as a surprise to you that this is the gin, at
least so far, that uses this fruit as one of its main ingredients. The tomatoes
that go into this gin are grown in Sicily where the combination of salty groundwater
and sun produces especially flavoursome fruits.

Once the ripened tomatoes, grown organically (natch) are picked
from the bushes they are crushed and mixed with a neutral spirit, the resulting
liquid then filtered and distilled. The two other botanicals in the mix,
juniper, of course, and an unnamed secret botanical, it is annoying when this
happens, are each distilled separately and then three separate distillations
are mixed and purified salt water, from the Oosterschelde which the distillery
overlooks, added. Grain alcohol is then introduced and the hooch is finally
reduced to its fighting ABV of 42.3%.

So, what is it like?

I think it is fair to say that it is not for everyone’s taste. On
removing the stopper, there seems to be little in the way of subtlety about the
aroma. It is overpoweringly one of tomato, strong and fruity, with juniper and
whatever the secret ingredient is barely getting a look in. Surprises continue
when the spirit is poured into a glass. It is a light brown in colour. In the
mouth, when drunk neat, there is an initial sensation of salt but that is soon
overwhelmed by the tomato. It is not clear what the juniper is doing as the
taste is predominantly one of a fruit juice rather than the more peppery taste
one normally associates with a gin.

Pouring in a tonic, I expected that the gin would settle down and
the other flavours would surface, if only briefly. Far from it, though, the
tonic seemed simply to give the tomato a fresh lease of life. The aftertaste is
sweet and tomatoey. It wasn’t an unpleasant drink, in fact the sweetness makes
it quite a refreshing drink, notwithstanding the presence of salt, but it was
just not what I would have expected of a gin and would probably make an
interesting base for an adventurous sort of cocktail.

Several glasses have convinced me that is worth persevering with
but if you are thinking of indulging, be certain that you like tomatoes. It is
certainly as far left field on the taste spectrum that I would care to venture.

Until the next time, cheers!

Book Corner – December 2019 (1)

[image error]

Something Fresh – P G Wodehouse

I always find the world that Wodehouse constructs is the
perfect antidote to the madness of modern life and also a form of light relief
from some of the heavier tomes I have been working my way through. This is the
first of the Blandings books, published in 1915 and known in the United States
as Something New, and introduces us to the absent-minded Lord Emsworth, his
dim-witted son, Freddie Threepwood. and the butler, Beach.   

I have come to the Blandings books somewhat late and after
reading a number of the tales of Jeeves and Wooster. Perhaps this was a mistake
because I cannot help but conclude that, if this book is anything to go by, the
miss that indefinable chemistry present in the relationship between Wooster and
his valet, Jeeves. Threepwood isn’t a patch on Bertie and Beach is a pale
shadow of a figure compared to the inimitable Jeeves. I also found it harder to
get into than other Wodehouse books.

That said, the Wodehouse aficionado will not be
disappointed. There is the usual mix of eccentric characters and the plot, thin
as prison gruel as it may be, provides the author with a canvas broad enough to
let his comic imagination run wild. Much of the action takes place in Blandings
Castle, home of Lord Emsworth. On a rare visit up to London, his Lordship, in a
moment of absent-mindedness, pocketed a rare Egyptian scarab, the pride and joy
of an American millionaire, J Preston Peters.

Peters is unwilling to risk a scene by asking his Lordship
directly for the return of his property, not least because his daughter is
engaged to be married to Threepwood. Instead he hires a young crime novelist,
Ashe Marson, to steal the item back. This is the cue for lots of skulking
around in the middle of the night, mistakes, alliances, mishaps and food
spillage. There is also some love interest, Ashe in pursuit of Joan Valentine,
who is also on a mission to repatriate the scarab. The saga resolves itself,
satisfactorily for all parties but that isn’t really the point of the book.

The point of the book is the language and it is very
apparent that Wodehouse is limbering up to become the master of comedic image that
he was in his pomp. Take this description of the impression that Beach made on
Ashe when he first met him; “Ashe’s first
impression of Beach, the butler, was one of tension. Other people, confronted
for the first time with Beach, had felt the same. He had that strained air of
being on the very point of bursting that one sees in bullfrogs and toy balloons”.
       

And how about this for a mastery of economy in the use of language and yet painting an extremely funny image? “Lord Emsworth raised his revolver and emptied it in the direction of the sound. Extremely fortunately for him, the Efficient Baxter had not changed his all-fours attitude. This undoubtedly saved Lord Emsworth the worry of engaging a new secretary. The shots sang above Baxter’s head one after the other, six in all, and found other billets than his person. They disposed themselves as follows: The first shot broke a window and whistled out into the night; the second shot hit the dinner gong and made a perfectly extraordinary noise, like the Last Trump; the third, fourth and fifth shots embedded themselves in the wall; the sixth and final shot hit a life-size picture of his lordship’s grandmother in the face and improved it out of all knowledge”.

Wonderful stuff but not his best. And the Empress is nowhere to be seen. She doesn’t appear until the late 1920s.

The Streets Of London – Part Ninety Eight

[image error]

Angel Court, SW1

I have a bit of an affinity with Angel Courts as I lived in
one when I was at University. This Court, though, is to be found in the St
James’s district and links King Street with Pall Mall. Quite when it was
constructed is not certain. It certainly appeared in Richard Horwood’s Plan of
the Cities of London and Westminster Shewing every House, a Google Maps of its
time, an ambitious project, which occupied him from 1792 and 1799, and one not
repeated again until the 1930s. In Horwood’s map it is a dead-end rather than the
thoroughfare linking two streets that it is today.

The long, tall, thin pub, with its richly decorated late
Victorian frontage, guarding one side of the Court at the King Street end, the
Golden Lion, was built in 1762. I haven’t been there for a while but I seem to
recall that it was a bit pokey at ground level but there was more space
upstairs. One of its more famous drinkers was Oscar Wilde and, being a boozer,
it naturally has its own resident spirit, a barmaid who was murdered by the
landlady in 1823.

There is a record from the archives of the Old Bailey of a fatal stabbing in the alley on December 7, 1692. Knife crime is not a new phenomenon in the metropolis. Having accused the defendant, J-K, of lewd conduct in the alley, the unfortunate and interfering Richard Towers was run through with a rapier. As St James’s was developed in the late 17th century for the aristocracy to reside in, it seems reasonable to assume that the Court was part of the original development of the area.         

Horwood’s map shows a house with a garden at the end of the Close. This may well have been a hotel called Nerot’s which had long since been abandoned and was in a poor state of repair. It was demolished in 1835 to make way for the St James’s Theatre. It was the brainchild of John Braham, an operatic star of the time, and the project was described in Old and New London in 1878 as “one of those unaccountable infatuations which stake the earnings of a lifetime upon a hazardous speculation”.

[image error]

It seemed ill-fated from the beginning. Braham sunk £28,000
of his money into the project, quarrelled frequently with his architect, and struggled
to get it licensed. As a piece of architecture, it was impressive, with a
neo-classical exterior and an interior modelled on a Louis XIV style, three
storeys high, with three bays at the front with shops on the ground floor. For
Braham, though, it was a money pit and after three years, he retired, seriously
out of pocket.

The theatre changed hands frequently, gaining a reputation as unlucky, and not prospering until the 1880s. Under the stewardship of the actor-manager, George Alexander, from 1891 to 1918, it grew a reputation for putting on cutting-edge plays including premieres of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest. Following Alexander’s death the theatre went through a succession of hands until, in 1950, Lawrence Olivier and his wife, Vivien Leigh, took over its management. In 1954 Terence Rattigan’s Separate Tables ran for 726 performances in 1954, a record for the theatre.

[image error]

But disaster struck in 1957 when a property developer
acquired the freehold from under Olivier’s feet and obtained permission to
demolish it and replace it with an office block. Despite protests at this
rather underhand behaviour, the theatre closed in July and was demolished in
December. Some decorated panels were preserved and were affixed to the frontage
of the office block but when it too was demolished, in 1980, they were moved
into the alley where they remain today.

Many a street in our metropolis has a tale or two to tell,
it seems.

What Is The Origin Of (259)?…

[image error]

Beyond the pale

If your behaviour is described as being beyond the pale, it
is unacceptable and beyond the accepted norms of decency. The pale in question
is a noun, not the adjective to denote a whitish colour, and means a stake or
pointed piece of wood. It comes via the Middle French word, pal, from the Latin
palus. But why compare behaviour to a stake?

The answer becomes clearer when you realise that pale in
English had another meaning, an area enclosed by a fence or a load of pales
and, by extension, aa distinct area subject to a particular jurisdiction. Until
its imperialistic expansion from the 17th century onwards England had
very little in the way of overseas territories, particularly after the Hundred
Years’ War, the territory of Calais, which it hung on to from 1337 until 1453,
and Ireland.

The Irish had always been a thorn in the English side and
only four counties, those of Louth, Meath, Dublin, and Kildare, remained loyal(ish)
to the king. The king’s turf was marked by a wooden turf, later turned into a
more impressive ten-foot-deep ditch surrounded by eight-feet banks and thorny
bushes. Those who lived inside the perimeter of the ditch were under the
protection of the English and abided by their laws and customs. Those outside
the ditch were outside the boundaries of what was considered then to be
civilised society.

Perhaps the most infamous pale was the Pale of Settlement
established by Catherine the Great which lasted between 1791 and 1917 and
denoted areas of Russia and Russian-occupied Poland within which Jews were
required to live. Sometimes Jews were allowed to live beyond the pale.

It was not until the 17th century that the term
began to be used figuratively to mean a sphere of influence or activity. The time
lag between the English pales and its usage makes it difficult to be certain
that there was a direct connection or whether it was just an etymologist’s
retro-fit. It is in this figurative sense that Shakespeare used it in The
Winter’s Tale from around 1610 in describing the onset of spring; “for the red
blood raigns in the winter’s pale”. Sir Walter Scott extended the Bard’s concept
of the term pale to denote a boundary of behaviour and brought back the sense
of a physical boundary by imagining someone leaping over it. In The Search
after Happiness, a poem from 1817, he wrote; “Italian license loves to leap
the pale”.      

Beyond the pale seems to have first appeared in a lyric poem
entitled The History of Polindor and Flostella by John Harington, published in
1657. Ortheris has retired to the country for some peace and quiet but soon
falls in love and “both Dove-like roved forth beyond the pale to planted
Myrtle-Walk”. The expression was slow to take off and there are only a few
citations, one of the earlier one being as late as November 6, 1809 in a poem
in the Belfast Commercial Chronicle, rather sensationally entitled Stanzas, on
hearing a wretch exclaim there is no God; The opening stanza concludes with the
following lines, “yet specious pleas the wretched being frames,/ beyond the
pale where common sense is found”.

When the phrase was used, it more usually came with a form
of explanation or limitation of the pale. A classic example is to be found in
the rather splendid A Complete History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most
Notorious Highwaymen, Footpads, Shoplifts and Cheats of Both Sexes, compiled by
Captain Alexander Smith and published in 1719. In describing Acteon, the good
Captain wrote, “while he suffered his eye to rove at pleasure and beyond the
pale of expedience”.  

Modern usage has reverted to Harington’s formulation. Some
users seem oblivious to its origin spelling pale as pail as in a bucket. Now
that really is beyond the pale.

Gin O’Clock – Part Eighty Five

[image error]

The second and final gin I picked up at Vancouver airport’s
duty-free shop was a bottle of Victoria Premium Cocktail Gin, in for a
cent in for a dollar, as they say. The ginaissance has spawned a wide variety
of categorisations for gin, some less helpful than others, and this is supposed
to be New Western or New Wave or New American, take your pick. There is no
formal, or should I say legal, definition of this style but in essence the
juniper element is toned down and other botanicals, not normally associated
with London Dry Gins, are deployed.   

The Victoria Distillery is now to be found in Sidney, a town
on the southern tip of Victoria Island in British Columbia, although when it
first started operations it did so in Victoria. The move was made in 2016 and
coincided with a rebrand and relaunch of the gin. Victoria Distillery is one of
British Columbia’s oldest distilleries and gin making started in 2008 under the
direction of Ken Winchester. However, the gin was revamped and the recipe
recalibrated in 2009, the upshot being that the juniper element was reduced and
some of the original botanicals changed.  

The bottle is bell-shaped and cylindrical, with a long neck
a brassy-coloured top and a synthetic cork stopper. The labelling is long and
thin with a large V in a bronze colour, the name of the gin and the batch
number; mine is from number 187. The label at the rear gives some information
about the gin, namely that “the world’s finest botanicals are lovingly
distilled and blended with pure Canadian water”. Some claim. A nice touch
is that the clear parts of the bottle contain motifs of hearts, glasses and the
like. A nice touch.       

Yet again, though, the labelling is schtum on what the magic
ingredients are that constitute the world’s finest botanicals. I will have to
rely upon my jaded palate and senses. On opening the bottle, the aroma seemed
to be missing that heavy, distinctive juniper smell. Instead, it seemed quite
light in comparison with many gins that I had tried with quite a bit of citrus.
In the mouth, this impression was confirmed. There was juniper in there but it
was not dominant, a fair amount of citrus in play and some coriander.

Then came a spicy element and what I can only describe as a
toffee-like flavour became apparent. The aftertaste was principally of spice
and pepper but not excessively so. And, I guess, that was my overall impression
of the gin. It seemed a bit undercooked with little in the way of a distinctive
taste. It relied on other elements such as ice and/or a tonic to give it that
whoosh that made it come alive. With an ABV of 42.5% it should have had enough
power to stand on its own glass stem but it didn’t.  

It was somewhat disappointing, perfectly acceptable for
drinking but with little of what I look for these days in a gin. Each to their
own, I suppose.

Until the next time, cheers!   

Book Corner – November 2019 (4)

[image error]

The Amateur Cracksman – E W Hornung

It is good, every now and again, to turn literary
conventions on their head. The classic crime novel has a detective, often an
amateur sleuth, together with faithful sidekick, solving nigh on impossible
crimes which have baffled all and sundry and bring the felons to justice.
Ernest William Hoffnung’s crime creation, on the other hand, is a gentleman
thief, who uses his cunning and position to pull off astonishing robberies and
evade detection.

Arthur J Raffles, together with his friend, Bunny Manders,
is the yin to the yang of Hornung’s brother in law’s famous creation, Sherlock
Holmes and the ever faithful Dr Watson. Indeed, this collection of eight
stories, first published in 1899, was dedicated to Arthur Conan Doyle, perhaps
with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Our hero, if he can so be described, is a pillar of Victorian
society, an excellent cricketer who plays regularly for England and at Lord’s
but a spendthrift who rarely has enough money to live on. His answer to his
regular cashflow problems is to use his position in society, it allows him
access to all the rich houses in the capital, to commit the odd robbery or two
and live off the earnings of his work. In the first story, The Ides of March
but originally published as a short story in 1898 as In the Chains of Crime,
Raffles happens upon Bunny, the narrator of the tales a la Watson, down on luck
and initiates him into his line of work.

The third story, Gentlemen and Players, introduces two
characters who are going to make life difficult for the duo, Inspector
Mackenzie of Scotland Yard and a notorious criminal, Crawshay. In the seventh
story, The Return Match, Raffles manages to get the dangerous Crawshay off his
back but in doing so reignites the suspicions of Mackenzie.

The last story, The Gift of the Emperor, sees Raffles at his
most audacious but his plans come unstuck when the stalwart detective boards
the ship he is travelling on at Genoa and a search reveals that Raffles has the
stolen jewel. Raffles jumps overboard and neither Bunny nor the then reader
knows whether he made it to the shore or not, surely a nod to Doyle’s The Final
Problem and Holmes’ encounter with his nemesis, Moriarty, at the Reichenhach
Falls. The modern reader knows that this isn’t the end of Raffles, just as
Holmes survives his tussle – you don’t kill off the goose that lays the golden
egg – but you can imagine the impact on the readers at the time.   

In truth, these stories are barely credible, laced with the
arrogant snobbery of the Victorian upper classes, very politically incorrect,
racist and sexist, but if you are prepared to put up with that, then they are entertaining,
undemanding reads. Perhaps troubled by the thought of a gentleman thief, Hornung
goes to great lengths to show that Raffles has a code of conduct. He would
never stoop to murder and will only steal out of financial necessity. However,
in the heat of a robbery, his steadfastness sometimes slips.

There are moments of comedy too and poor old Bunny is the
stooge to the great man, never really let into what is going on, there to
provide the muscle and, when he does use his initiative as in Nine Points of
the Law, he nearly wrecks the plan. This means that the reader is, along with
Bunny, behind the action, a device that some readers may find irksome. As Bunny
states with some justification, “You lay your plans, and never say a word,
and expect me to tumble to them by light of nature”.    

Still, take the stories for what they are and you will spend
an enjoyable evening.  

You’re Having A Laugh – Part Thirty

[image error]

The Princess Caraboo hoax of 1817

The bucolic calm of the Gloucestershire village of
Almondsbury was disturbed on April 3, 1817 when the local cobbler came across a
young woman, seemingly disoriented, wearing exotic clothing and babbling in a
strange language. Taking her to his home and communicating by sign language he soon
determined that she wanted food and drink and somewhere to sleep. The cobbler’s
wife, though, was not happy to have this strange woman under her roof and told
her husband to take her to a Mr Hill, the Overseer of the Poor.

One of Mr Hill’s tasks was to take anyone suspected of vagrancy to the local Justice of the Peace, which he duly did. Samuel Worrall, who lived in nearby Knole Park House, was the magistrate for the area, took pity on the woman and with the help of his wife, Elizabeth, tried to make some sense of what the woman was saying. These enquiries came to naught save for deducing that the woman called herself Caraboo.

[image error]

Her arrival had put the Worralls in a spot. They had their
position in society to think of and harbouring a woman who, for all they knew,
could have been a criminal wasn’t on. Saw Elizabeth arranged for the local pub,
The Bowl, to give her rooms. On the walls of the pub were prints of exotic
fruits, all the rage at the time, and Caraboo astonished the local topers by
pointing to a pineapple and saying Nanas, the Indonesian word for the fruit.
Caraboo’s stock rose dramatically, the good folk of Almondsbury being convinced
that she was from the East, and she was invited back to stay with the Worralls.

To say that Caraboo was not an easy house guest is no
understatement. She slept on the floor rather than in a bed, would only eat vegetables
and drink tea, and would insist on clambering up on to the roof to say her
prayers to a god she called Allah-talla. Her appearance was disturbing to
contemporary eyes with her exotic clothing and strange markings on her head.

The mystery of Caraboo seemed to have been solved when she
was introduced to a Portuguese sailor, Manuel Eynesso, who seemed to understand
her language. He told Mr Worrall that she was a princess from an island called
Javasu, had been captured by pirates, had escaped by jumping overboard in the
Bristol Channel and swum ashore. Transformed instantly from a vagrant to an
exotic princess whose escape from the pirates appealed to the Worrall’s
anti-slavery sentiments, Caraboo was someone to cherish and boast about.

The Worralls were not shy in letting all in the locality of
their exotic house guest. Her eccentricities were now something to behold with
wonder and she wowed onlookers with her skills with the bow and arrow and her
exotic dancing. She would swim unclothed in the lake, away from prying eyes, at
least so we are told. Drawings were made of her and stories were written about
her in the local press. Samuel Worrall sent some of her strange writings to
Oxford to be analysed and a Dr Wilkinson, using a copy of Edmund Fry’s
Pantographia, attested to the authenticity of her language and stated that the
markings on her head were the work of oriental surgeons. Caraboo even had a
ball held in her honour in Bath.

Caraboo’s moment of fame lasted for around ten weeks before
her bubble was rudely burst by a Mrs Neale, a boarding-housekeeper from
Bristol. Recognising Caraboo’s picture in the Bristol Journal as that of Mary
Willcocks, an itinerant servant girl from the Devon village of Witheridge, she
blew the whistle on her deception. Caraboo was a figment of Willcocks’
imagination, her language a mix of imaginary words and Romany, and the marks on
her head were the scars from a cupping operation performed in one of London’s
poorhouse hospitals. Worse still, the academics from Oxford reported that the
writings Worrall had submitted for examination were of a “humbug language”,
a popular term in Oxford it would seem.

The British press seized on the hoax as a tick with which to beat the naivety and gullibility of the rural middle classes. Quite why Willcocks carried out the hoax, other than to see how far it got her as she had nothing else to lose, is not clear but after a stint in America she returned to Blighty and tried her luck in the theatre as Princess Caraboo. Her stage career did not take off and she returned to the West country, supplying and selling leeches, until her death in 1864.        

[image error]

If you enjoyed this, why not try Fifty Scams and Hoaxes by
Martin Fone

https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/business/fifty-scams-and-hoaxes/

What Is The Origin Of (258)?…

[image error]

A snowball’s chance in hell

I’m back on the trail of phrases which denote impossibility
and a snowball’s chance in hell is both perfectly understandable in its
figurative and almost certainly an Americanism. In popular imagination hell was
typified as a place where eternal fires burned. A snowball, of course, is prone
to melt once temperatures rise above freezing point. Naturally, therefore, a
snowball subjected to the fires of hell would be transformed into a pool of
water in pretty short order. Likening one’s chances to that of the survival of a
snowball in such circumstances is tantamount to saying you don’t stand a
chance.

It was in the 1880s that the pairing of a snowball and hell hit
the printed page and all the examples are American. The Detroit Free Press of
April 9, 1880, reporting the withdrawal of the support of former Secretary of
State, George Gorham, from Rutherford Hayes, the 19th US President, to
Ulysses Grant, noted that he had considered under Hayes’ administration, “a
Republican in the South had about as much chance as a snowball in hell”.

It cropped up again in the Las Vegas Daily Gazette of March
27, 1884. The journal remarked that “there is no more show for the people of
New Mexico to have a word to say in reference to the laws that shall be enacted
during the next nine days than there is for a snowball in hell”. It is
intriguing that the earliest examples reflect powerlessness in politics. This
may simply be a coincidence. Whilst the meaning of the phrase is pretty clear,
the fact that it is used without a gloss is suggestive of the fact that the phrase
was in common parlance before the 1880s.

For those with more sensitive religious sensibilities, there
was a variant. A report of an electoral dispute in the November 24, 1890
edition of The Atlanta Constitution records that the lawyer acting for the defendant,
one Mr Norman, gave the rationale for his client switching his vote as “he
saw that Northwood’s chances were about like a snowball’s chances in the lower
regions”. The substitution deprives the phrase of its force, I feel.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the phrase also was used to describe
speed, perhaps a more natural interpretation of the allusion. Many things are
unlikely to escape the fires of hell for long, not least the souls of the
damned, but it is the sheer rapidity of the demise of a snowball that is the
point. The Rio Grande Republican picked up a report of a fire in a bakery in
the San Marcial Times on January 27, 1883, noting that “the bakery melted
away like a snowball in hell”.

It may have wormed its way into the consciousness of the
paper because on November 3rd that year it reported that “a
snowball in hell will not disappear more quickly than your friend if you ask
him to drink at any other saloon than the Commercial”. And the Omaha Sunday
Bee, great name, ran a short story on March 6, 1887 entitled A Wyoming Wedding,
in which a character says, “that rheumatiz is a pesky thing, ain’t it? A man
can’t last no longer than a snowball in hell, ridin’ with that in him”.

The Americans have their snowball in hell and we have not a
cat’s chance in hell, two variations on a theme.  

Gin O’Clock – Part Eighty Four

[image error]

I have recently commented on the growth of gin distilleries
in British Columbia, particularly in Vancouver. Pleasurable as it would have
been, time precluded me from visiting more than the couple I did but there is
always the airport duty free shop. It is getting increasingly more difficult to
find new gins, mainly because they seem to be majoring in on one of the more
regrettable fads spawned by the ginaissance, flavoured gins. Still, tucked away
in relative obscurity I managed to find a bottle of Tempo Renovo Dry Gin.

An elegant bottle it was, too, rectangular in shape, leading
up to a longish neck and a brown, artificial cork stopper. The labelling is
modest and elegant with a beige background, what looks to be the sun embossed at
the top and lettering in brown, blue and silver. It doesn’t exactly shout out
at you and can easily get lost amongst its more vulgar and brash competitors
but if the design means anything, it suggests something that is sophisticated
and confident of its own merits.

Tempo Renovo is distilled by Goodridge and Williams Distilling
who were established by Stephen Goodridge in 2013. They started out making
vodka, using grain from the Peace River Valley in British Columbia which was
mashed and fermented at their distillery in Delta. Their take on vodka having
been well received, it was a natural progression to use the spirit as a base
for a gin. And so Tempo Renovo was born. The name, so the rear label informs me,
means time to revive or refresh. I will drink to that.

The rear label goes on to describe the product as “a
modern expression of contemporary dry gin for our times; smoothly refreshing, it
delivers the perfect balance”. Frustratingly, though, there is no
indication what has gone into the mix. It is becoming a bit of a hobby horse of
mine but a little more information beyond marketing-spin would be appreciated.

Of course, the only way to find out what it tastes like and
what may have been added to the grain spirit is to try it. On removing the
stopper, I could detect the juniper but the presence of liquorice was equally
apparent as were hints of some citrus elements. In the glass it is clear and in
the mouth it has a creamy consistency to it. The juniper is discernible but it
has a fight on its hands with the liquorice to make its presence felt. Then the
spices came in to play with a hint of lemon at the end. The aftertaste was
slightly peppery.

I found that the addition of ice and a decent tonic pepped the gin up, after all it was designed with those elements in mind, but, overall, I was a bit disappointed with the drink. I like my gins firmly juniper-led and Tempo Renovo would certainly not fill that requirement. With an ABV of 40% it seemed a bit muted to me, trying to steer a steady path between the inherent flavours of the botanicals. Perhaps I got the wrong message from the labelling. In reality, it was a pleasant enough drink but a bit understated.

Until the next time, cheers!

Book Corner – November 2019 (3)

[image error]

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary – M R James

I am also partial to a good ghost story and in my opinion
the master par excellence is Montague Rhodes James, the Cambridge University mediaeval
scholar and antiquarian. Given his professional and academic interest in dusty
archives and the other impedimenta of a practitioner of the art of
antiquarianism, it is no surprise that he reflected this interest in his
stories. This collection, first published in 1904 although several of the eight
stories had appeared individually in magazines, was the first of the books for
which he is best known today.

What I enjoy best about James is that he makes the reader do
a lot of the work. His narrative concentrates on setting the scene, in creating
the atmosphere and bringing matters to a head, leaving the reader’s febrile
imagination fill in the blanks, burnish the details. They are subtle tales of
nudges and hints and, as such, are immensely satisfying. In truth, there are
commonalities in the plot, an atmospheric setting, seemingly ordinary in its way
but with a hint of something not quite right, a naïve protagonist and the
discovery of something, usually a book or an artefact, which is the medium
through which the supernatural force is roused. James doesn’t do nice ghosts.
They are grotesque, malevolent beings, although if you read the text carefully
there is precious little in the way of description. James provides just enough
for you to paint your own picture.

All of the stories, in their own way, are excellent but each
reader will have their particular favourite. For me, it was the final story,
The Treasure of Abbot Thomas. An antiquarian, too clever for his own good,
unlocks the clues to the location of some treasure contained in a stained-glass
window. However, he soon realises that he has bitten off more than he can chew
and that he would have been better off leaving sleeping dogs lie.

There were a couple I had read before, I was surprised how
few in this book I had. Number 13 gives you a clue as to why hotels are shy of allocating
that number to one of their rooms. The other, Oh, Whistle, and I’ll come to You,
My Lad, hasn’t aged quite so well. The blustering old military type with his
definite opinions on all matters Papist was a bit too much to bear but the
mysterious and powerful forces let loose by simply blowing a whistle found in
an old ruin was powerfully told.

The book starts off with a tremendous tale, Canon Alberic’s
Scrap-book. A collector is surprised that a sacristan of a church in France is
willing to let him have Alberic’s valuable manuscript for a pittance. When he
gets it back to his room, he soon realises that there is more to the pages than
meets the eye. The Mezzotint was another atmospheric tale, the eponymous
illustration giving a sense of the unstoppable force it was to unleash.

Lost Hearts was a little too obvious for me but the Ash Tree
made up for it with its lashings of creepiness. Count Magnus was a lighter,
more humorous romp and illustrated the perils of disturbing the dead.  

If you like a good ghost story, and now is the time with the
long nights and the howling winds, you cannot go wrong with this collection.