I know nothing about
whisky, other than I enjoy one dram as much as the next one, and I wouldn’t
have known a Glenglassaugh from Glenn Miller. But since I inherited my father’s
collection of miniature single malts I have started to take more than a passing
interest in the amber nectar, while I catalogue hundreds of obscure bottles
from distilleries with impossible names like A’Bainne or Pityvaich. As I pour (no pun intended) over names, dates
and intriguing locations, I have started to identify a few that are missing and
tried to pick up the mantle of completing the collection via the internet – a
tool that father never had at his disposal. Just as well in some cases, when I
do a Google search for ‘Ladyburn 15 year-old’ and it comes back with a list of
illegal brothels in Thailand!
Eventually I track down a Macallans 1961, the holy grail of rare bottles
of which only 369 were ever made, missing from my collection and coming up for impending
auction. Excitedly I register on their website. Sadly last Wednesday my courage
, besides my soon to be wife, would not allow me to hit the button enough times
to reach the three hundred quid it made, let alone £5000 that its full-bottle
brother achieved. I am consoled with the fact that it was probably fake anyway,
because who is ever going to check? The mischievous streak in me considers
running up a 1961 label on photo-shop and gluing it on to a tiny bottle of
petrol. Or better still, making up some names of distilleries that sound like
someone trying to speak with a clothes peg on their tongue and selling them on
ebay!
Strangely enough, it
is unpronounceable Scottish names that are occupying most of my waking hours as
it is, while I cement together the tome that will be the History of Aberdeen
Angus cattle which, after 18 months work, is nearing a first draft. What in
heaven’s name was it that drove breeders to call their animals things like
‘Proud Gairloch Ericina of Murdochcairnie?’ Didn’t they know that somewhere,
some poor clerk would have to write them down in a book one day? Even now I
have had to check the spelling 4 times in case Mrs McDreary from
Lochnagoldfinch finds a spelling mistake and condemns my work with accusations
of illiteracy.
They do that, though,
those purists. That is something I have found out first hand with my travel-guides,
when sad vindictive retired school-teachers are allowed to write reviews of my
work on Amazon and hide behind cowardly nicknames such as Biblioprefect or
LiteraryMother, condemning my book on Bordeaux to a one star rating because I
had missed an accent off the name of her local restaurant. There are probably similar ones who
scrutinise this column with literary tooth-combs. To you I say, stick to
reading the Observer!
Apologies for having
a go at you, dear reader, but I am a little grumpy today having sat up half of
last night to watching the golf on TV. On that subject, I have one observation
to make. ‘Dear Mrs Watson, no matter what
you were smoking, drinking or injecting at the time, naming a child Bubba
is seriously, seriously wrong!’
I will admit that since
finding a bit more time to play in the winter in East Lothian, I have got right
into golf again; so much so that Wendy has got me tickets to the Ryder Cup this
year in Gleneagles. This in itself was a complete mission because, although it
is held in tranquil Scotland, the event is run by paranoid Americans. To get
anywhere near the place, we have to fill out ten page immigration forms, submit
passport details and solemnly declare, so help me god, that we are not
terrorists. And it gets even worse for the locals. Poor Mrs McDreary will be
ring-fenced into her home in Auchterarder village for a whole week in September.
She will only be allowed in and out of her front door via a retina-scan and
strip-search to fetch a loaf of bread, in case she takes it upon herself to
murder anyone in obscenely loud check trousers and an idiotic name!
I am quite looking
forward to it though, since Wendy and I have extended our love of live sporting
events from rugby to other disciplines. As well as Wimbledon, this year we are also
hoping to go to the snooker world championship, possibly the last year it will
be in the quaint Crucible theatre in Sheffield before that vile promoter, Barry
Hearn, gets it moved to Las Vagas or somewhere equally squalid. Mark my words,
it won’t be long before he reduces snooker into a vulgar circus like everything
else he promotes in a bid to attract the lowlife who currently frequent darts
championships. As we speak, John Parrot
and Steve Davies are being measured up for over-sized baseball caps and the
lovely Hazel Irvine fitted with Double D-cup silicone, while the lady referees
will be clad in leopard-skin lycra hot-pants and stilettos. Commentary will be
provided by Ant and Dec or Will.i.am and the scoreboard will be replaced by
bimbos on roller-skates to an audience full of Bill Werbeniuk lookalikes!
Incidentally, when that pillock John Virgo starts squealing ‘where’s the white
ball going...!!!’ am I the only one who wishes it was ‘down his throat?!’
Finally, I cannot
resist once again having a go at the BBC’s woeful Sunday night farcical look at
the countryside who have descended to a new low in giving away ‘wild flower
seeds!’ Any farmer, gardener and even city pedestrian will recognise that, in
general, wild flowers are weeds. How can distributing 200,000 packets of weeds
possibly be a benefit to anybody other that the makers of Round-Up? Thanks
Ellie, I’ll look forward to planting my ragwort, sow-thistles, creeping
buttercup and stinking mayweed – in your vegetable patch!
Meanwhile, our very
own vegetable garden is now well populated with onions, potatoes, courgettes
and beans, desperately awaiting some rain. Yes, after half a metre of rain in
three months in France, we are once again as dry as our empty swimming pool. Never
happy, are we?
