Gin

I have this idea for a book. I don’t want to get into the specifics because it’s really good and I don’t want anyone to steal it, but I will say that it would be non-fiction and emphasize literary cocktails. It’s been my frequent observation that many successful writers, and the characters they create, have a special relationship with drink. I suspect this is also the case with unsuccessful writers but by definition I’m not so familiar with either their biographies or their work so I couldn’t say for sure. I have gone so far as to make a mental catalog of literary cocktails I’ve stumbled on to date: drinks that I read in novels or know were favorites of one author or another. If my list was organized alphabetically, and really it’s not organized at all, the first entry would be Absinth, the elusive and illegal drink of Hemingway and many other intensely creative and crazy men. There would be a few hands full of cocktails and liquors in the middle and then at the end would be Zubrowka, a Russian potato vodka bottled with a blade of buffalo grass, and the downfall of an unfortunate in Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge.

I have a new favorite literary cocktail from a British novel that I barely cracked and have put on hold for the time being. The drink is called a White Lady and is a combination of equal parts gin, Grand Marnier, and lemon juice mixed in a shaker, strained into a chilled glass, and served without adornment. It’s a taste sensation and every person who finds it mildly appealing should give it a try.

It’s true that I’m not much of a writer, but I am a sailor, so I feel like I’ve earned the right to drink gin and orange liquor and wax poetic about it on a Sunday evening.

But it is Sunday, and I don’t like thinking about work on the weekends, so I’ll sign off and chime in again tomorrow when I’m required by law to think about my job.