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Everybody, on occasion,

(a) wants to,

(b) feels they [sic] ought to,

(c) or have [sic] reason to

entertain their [sic] friends in their [sic] own homes [sic].

The author goes on to suggest reasons why people should get these ideas, such as that they enjoy parties, or want to return a party given by someone else at his home. In the same ground-covering style, he points out that parties can be small or large; that they require preparation but that bottles can be lined up in advance; that you must decide (a) who you want to invite, (b) who you think should come, (c) who you feel you must invite, (d) who you think it is politic to invite; that, where possible, cloakroom facilities should be available; and much, much more. My word, if these are secrets, what can be the like of the publicly available information on the topic that has been lying about unregarded all these years?

I must get hold of the same writer’s Wedding Etiquette Properly Explained and The Best Man’s Duties. I can see it now—“People get married because (a) they want to, (b) they feel they ought to, (c) somebody is pointing a shotgun at them. . .”

To make cock ale: Take ten gallons of ale and a large cock, the older the better; Parboil the cock, flay him, and stamp him in a stone mortar till his bones are broken (you must craw and gut him when you flay him), then put the cock into two quarts of sack [sweet or sweetish white wine], and put it to three pounds of raisins of the sun stoned, some blades of mace and a few cloves; put all these into a canvas bag, and a little before you find the ale has done working, put the ale and bag together into a vessel; in a week or nine days bottle it up, fill the bottles but just above the neck, and give it the same time to ripen as other ale.

—Old recipe given in F. C. Lloyd’s

Art and Technique of Wine

To sweeten musty casks: Take some dung of a milking cow when it is fresh, and mix it with a quantity of warm water, so as to make it sufficiently liquid to pass through a funnel, but previously dissolve two pounds of bay salt and one pound of alum; then put the whole in a pot on the fire, stir it with a stick and when nearly boiling, pour it into the cask, bung it up tight, shake it about, and let it remain in for two hours, then give it another stirring and after two hours more it may be rinsed out with cold water.

—Prescription quoted in F. C. Lloyd’s

Art and Technique of Wine

ACTUAL DRINKS

I PROVIDE HERE only a selection. A complete account of all known drinks, from absinthe to the Zoom cocktail (brandy, honey and cream—not today, thank you) would be deadening to write and read. Completeness would also involve the rehearsal of a good deal of common knowledge. It would be rather shabby to take money for explaining that, for instance, a gin and tonic consists of gin and tonic, plus ice and a slice of lemon. However, this gives me occasion to remark that that admittedly excellent and refreshing drink gains an extra thirst-quenching tang from a good squeeze of lemon juice in addition to the lemon slice, and so to propound

G.P. 2: Any drink traditionally accompanied by a bit of fruit or vegetable is worth trying with a spot of the juice thrown in as well.

I confine myself, then, to giving recipes intended to offer something of my own, whether it be a modest tip like the one exemplified above, an attack on some received notion, or, as in some cases, a whole new formula—if there is any such thing in a field so extensively and intensively studied. What follows is the fruit of some dozen years’ research; I started drinking much longer ago, be in no doubt of that, but had to reach a certain stage of affluence before I could risk spoiling even a mouthful of liquor by foolhardy experiment. My three categories are the Short and the Long and the Hot, an illogical but, there being no short hot drinks, practical mode of division.

SHORT DRINKS

If, as Philip Larkin observed not so long ago, the age of jazz