A friend of mine had a birthday last month (hey, Maria!), so I told her (as we live half a world away) to have a drink for me. Specifically, my all-time favouritest drink evah — scotch and water with two ice cubes. Bartenders have asked me if I’m really serious about that ice cube requirement. Well, it depends on the size of ice cube, but yes I am. I take my scotch very seriously, thank you very much. Scotch, of course, is also known as whisky. Not whisKEY, you Americans. WhisKY. No ‘e’. I was reading a Regency recently and the hero helped himself to a whisKEY. And it really pulled me out of the story because I was wondering whether the author was referring to Irish whisKEY or had just used the American spelling when she really meant whisKY. It’s not just me being a pedant because they really all taste different.

My favourite drink used to be a Scotch and dry, but that became just too difficult to order in the States, because most bartenders thought I was asking for a “scotch and rye”. (Swooning followed.) As I got older, it was just easier to top up with water (and some ice) than to go looking for dry ginger ale, which also varies considerably in taste.

This is also apropos a book J is reading at the moment — a collection of essays by lately deceased Polish writer, Zygmunt Kaluzynski. He described seeing the play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and said it was a lot like drinking whisky, with a flurry of action, then settling down to nothing, before another flurry of action, followed by utter boredom, and so on. Poles, he said, would never “get” the play because they drink vodka, and vodka drinking is not like that. It is much more straightforward. You have a bottle, you have a tall-sided tumbler, you drink. Simple.

I hadn’t thought about it like that before, but there’s a grain of truth in what Kaluzynski is saying. Drinking scotch is, for me, as much ritual as alcoholic enjoyment. There’s the precise requirements of the drink’s components, the relaxed sipping, the little swirl you give the glass so the ice cubes clink against each other and the side of the glass. There’s the glass itself, which should preferably be clear and heavy, with a thick base and delicate straight sides. (Krosno know how to make kick-ass whisky glasses, even though they have the business sense of retarded cockroaches.*) There should be a little, but not too much, condensation on the glass from the ice; a little, but not too much chill, in the mixture. Yes, I suppose it sounds masturbatory, but what else can you do? It is scotch, after all.

And after you finish your first glass, you go through the process all over again. Ah, bliss. More than any other verboten item during my pregnancies — the cold cuts, the wine, the soft cheeses, the salt, the sushi and sashimi, the coffee and tea — I missed the scotch. I don’t gamble (well, not in organised casino or sports type deals), I’m not into retail therapy, I don’t smoke tobacco, except for the rare sheesha. My biggest vices are swearing like a trooper and drinking scotch, so I think I can be afforded some slack-cutting here. Cheers!

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* I say this because the company was relying, almost exclusively, on trade with the United States for its viability. With the value of the American dollar, and consumer confidence, tanking (and everyone should have seen that coming, tbh), costs at Krosno have increased markedly, leading to a possible retrenchment of 1,200 people within the town of the same name. No town can afford that kind of attrition. It’s corporate stupidity, plain and simple.