It’s not exactly that the pantry is empty but lockdown led me to rationalise the drinks’ cupboard.
I finished off the Jack Daniels by adding it to mid-morning espressos but the Gemma d’Abeto, although it’s a tiny bottle, remained for sentimental reasons. It’s distilled from pine resin in a Servite monastery not far from Florence. I have twice made a pit-stop there, walking from Bologna to Florence.
It is aromatic and sweet – cloying if you drink it in the garden at Barons Court, even with cubes of ice, but more acceptable on a hot hike along the Apennines with no other alcohol on offer.
As you can see we are on top of the virus for now in H&F. If the Servites have an ounce of sense they will tell Trump that their elixir wards off the virus. He will swallow anything.
The book is Corkscrew and it didn’t disappoint. Yesterday I finished the sequel, Brut Force, with equal pleasure. They are farces, a word that is often deployed incorrectly. A farce is what used to happen at the Whitehall Theatre with Brian Rix discovered in a wardrobe on stage with his trousers down. These are a little edgier but just as funny with top notes of Ian Fleming coming through with a lot of Tom Sharpe and Kyril Bonfiglioli. I hope it won’t spoil it if I let slip that the murder weapon is Jancis Robinson’s Oxford Companion to Wine (second edition).
They might best be characterised as Lad Lit – it’s a man’s world if you choose to read Peter Stafford-Bow. Goody-goody- gumdrops, it’s a trilogy so one more to read after I have got over the first two.