Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis Book

"Note You really have to use bourbon. The Rye Old-Fashioned is not too bad; the Irish version just tolerable; the Scotch one not worth while." Exactly. And never mind the rye snobs suddenly all about, I was once twitted by my best friend's wife for not specifying brandy - because that's how the Old-Fashioned was made in 1890s New Orleans, you see. She has a meaty ass, big long-toed feet, and she paints. I loathe her in an amiable, intermittently lustful, sitcom-like way.


There's not much to do but quote him. This passage decided my purchase:

You get hold of a half litre of vodka and what's probably harder to come by in a socialist county, three paper cups. Perhaps the grocer will let you stand in his shop, anyway you find someplace where the wind isn't blowing and you drink the vodka, quite fast I expect, and then you go home. And that's your night out with the lads.

In its way I find the thought of that almost as depressing as anything to do with the Gulag or mental hospitals. Remember it when the juke box in the pub is too loud or they can't do you a Harvey Walbanger.

When me and the aforementioned best friend are trudging through snow drifts toward a bar, heads down, breasting the Arctic blast, grapeshot by ice pellets, one of us will inevitably cry out - and the other will sustain his fellow by shouting "Stalingrad, [those fuckers had it so much worse at] Stalingrad." And then we laugh and punch shoulders. We're dorks - but men love challenges, tests of fortitude. Surveying my current situation, I see that the challenges I have chosen are: the weather (the Northern pedestrian-busgoer is congeneric with the Homeless Guy; stout boots, sturdy packs, with negligible nuances of cost); booze (consoling yet treacherous); a long-term relationship (the Ikea-floorlamp-shadowy dim domestic stalemate); and the infinite mutability of the English sentence. Kingsley and Martin clashed over style. Kingsley is unimpeachable, but safe.