Everyday Drinking_ The Distilled Kingsley Amis - Kingsley Amis [39]
But that is about as far as it goes. The interior of today’s pub has got to look like a television commercial, with all the glossy horror that implies. Repulsive “themes” are introduced: the British-battles pub, ocean-liner pub, Gay Nineties pub. The draught beer is no longer true draught, but keg, that hybrid reasonably discriminating drinker can find plenty to offend him without having to look at all far. What most often springs to his eye is not being given enough. Those of us who are poor or mean cannot or will not do much about this. But for the benefit of those who are neither, who have merely got their priorities wrong, let me enunciate
G.P. (General Principle) 1: Up to a point (i.e. short of offering your guests one of those Balkan plonks marketed as wine, Cyprus sherry, poteen and the like), go for quantity rather than quality. Most people would rather have two glasses of ordinary decent port than one of a rare vintage. On the same reasoning, give them big drinks rather than small—with exceptions to be noted later. Serious drinkers will be pleased and reassured, unserious ones will not be offended, and you will use up less chatting-time going round to recharge glasses.
My final observation, before getting down to details, is that serving good drinks, like producing anything worth while, from a poem to a motor-car, is troublesome and expensive. (If you are interested, a worthwhile poem is expensive to the poet in the sense that he could almost always earn more money by spending the time on some other activity.) But I undertake, in what follows, to keep a sharp eye on both points, to show where and how trouble can be minimized and to what degree you can legitimately cut down costs.
It is the unbroken testimony of all history that alcoholic liquors have been used by the strongest, wisest, handsomest, and in every way best races of all times.
—GEORGE SAINTSBURY
THERE’S A CERTAIN satisfaction to be got from bringing out a book of collected journalism. Being paid twice for the same basic work is always agreeable, and in my case not as frequent as I should like. More than that, you have the chance of correcting your mistakes of fact and style, or some of them, putting in stuff you forgot or didn’t know about the first time round, and righting the wrongs done you by the copyeditor and the printer. Some of the satisfaction given by the last of these is of the rather grim variety, because of damage already done. It would be nice if everybody who saw the newspaper columns were to buy and read this book, but no, and all over the place some people will continue to think that I think that “anymore” and “forever” are single words and (thanks in the first place to the copytaker on the telephone) that “alright in it’s way” is all right in some way or other.
The most satisfying satisfaction of all, at least until the cheque comes, is afforded by restoring editorial cuts. There’s no such thing as a non-cutting editor; it’s not in the nature of the beast. The fellow prowls through your copy like an overzealous gardener with a pruning hook, on the watch for any phrase he senses you were rather pleased with, preferably one that also clinches your argument and if possible is essential to the general drift of the surrounding passage. Then— slash! Sending in exactly the number of words asked for only sharpens his eye and his cutting edge.
I have made no serious attempt to disguise or repair the Saturday-newspaper look and feel of these articles. To do so with any style would have involved transforming them entirely into longish essays on wine, spirits, beer, etc., implying a claim to a sort of completeness and authority I’m afraid I’m not up to. Let me rub in for a moment the fact that the pieces were written to be read one at a time