Convert a friend

Dave encourages us to embark on a year of education,whisky style.

It happens on average once a year. Whether it's mood, or season, or cosmic alignment I don't know, but there will always be a period when the only music I can listen to is by Captain Beefheart. Mrs B is used to it by now. She gives me a wearied look and shuts the door. Not that I care. I just sit there on my own playing Trout Mask Replica (on vinyl, in its entirety. Loud. All day) shouting along to Orange Claw Hammer.

Bliss for me, but I fully appreciate that it's probably just a tad... well, weird.

Thing is, this year as I lightened things a little with Safe As Milk, the seven-year-old comes in and begins dancing to Electricity. (I don't know what I'm most proud of: this, her discovery of The Broons, or her new love of square sausage).

She's found a way into the somewhat daunting Beefheartian world. Before you know it, she'll be on to Lick My Decals Off.

This sprang to mind while I was ensconced in the Ginger Pig in Hove (it's a pub by the way) surrounded by whisky neophytes. The gathering was the, perhaps inevitable, consequence of a rash comment I'd made a year before. Hey, it was late and drams had been taken when I said something along the lines of, “Give me a whisky hater for 20 minutes and I'll find them a whisky that they like.” It's the sort of thing that you wake up regretting (slightly) the morning after, though in my heart I liked to think it was true.

Needless to say, someone took up the challenge. A friend in fact, who assembled a crew of whisky newbies...

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• By : Dave Broom
• In : A dram with Dave Broom
• Issue : 78
• Page : 12
• Words : 755