Finally, finally I am back online. After a month of faffing and phone calls BT has deemed us fit to rejoin the world. In celebration I’m raising a large Ardbeg, a divine ten year old Islay, in celebration and as its peaty complexity intoxicates me I shall conjure a blog and morn all the blogs that have fallen, unwritten, by the wayside over the last month.
With no internet to distract me over the last five weeks I have become quite domesticated. Sky TV can only occupy you for so long of an afternoon. There is only so much History and Discovery channel you can take.
So, much as I’ve enjoyed learning about black holes, the emergence of the Shogun in Japan and the rape of the new world by the Spanish I’ve more often than not found myself elbow deep in the kitchen sink.
Subsequently the Girlf has been reluctant to get us reconnected. Not only is the kitchen sparkling when she gets home but over these last few weeks her daughters have actually started talking to her again.
Before, the Eldest would disappear to her room, Wi-Fi’ed up, to MSN the world. Communications only restored when she hollered down for a delivery of crisps or diet coke. Need for stimulation has forced her back down to the lounge to crash out in front of the telly and grace, by default, her mothers presence.
The Youngest had already tired of the World Wide Web before our exile. A broken lap top had shown her that there was nothing there to maintain her interest but her sisters re-emergence coaxed her down into the family bosom.
Brimming with a mothers pride and love the Girlf therefore has managed to delay our re-connection blaming everything on BT dragging its feet. I, ever the sceptic, am suspicious this denial of my net is more to do with her design rather than us being buffeted and tossed by the winds of fate and begrudgingly she has finally capitulated and gotten us reconnected.
All Blackberry users are at heart very selfish people. So, as she could check her e-mails and Facebook at will the rest of us had to suffer, outcasts from mainstream society, limited to the people we actually met face to face or texted.
At last this half life is over and I pour myself another Ardbeg.
Whisky is an acquired taste. It is the older mans poison. Sooner or later everyone ends up on whisky. All it takes is a couple of decades of abusing your taste buds through smoking, drinking and rich food. It dulls them to the point that you can happily chug a straight malt without complaint.
The young don’t appreciate it. Hard liquor is hard liquor, a means to an end. Nasty, foul some, noxious liquid imbued to achieve the transcendence of drunkenness. An eighteen year can’t tell the difference between a twelve year old Glenfiddich and fucking Teachers. That’s why they drink vodka. It’s inoffensive, mixes well and gets the job done.
To make a spirit that is palatable without the mask of a mixer takes time and love and dedication and time is something the older man understands.
This particular bottle started life ten years ago. Ten years, a decade. The year two thousand, what were you doing? That was before 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, Big Brother had only just started and was a media revolution not the mainstream dross that it is now. This whisky has taken more than a quarter of my life to perfect. That’s something isn’t it?
But what of a fifty year old malt? There are some around. Although your local supermarket normally only goes up to twenty five year olds, you could find yourself in possession of a bottle that started its journey in 1960. Pre Beatles, pre Vietnam, your parents were children or maybe not even born when these spirits were put into casks and kept for prosperity.
It’s humbling...but then again I’m pissed.
So this drunk continues to play with his toy. It’s good to be back and I promise the next blog will be more tempered, and sober and less rambling but after a month of absence the desire to post has been too much to contain and I was loathed to wait until the morning.
Tomorrow I’ll be sleeping off this spontaneous drinking session and mourning the lack of Ardbeg. My head will hurt and I will curse myself but for now I shall enjoy the moment. I am warm and fuzzy and happy and life is good and I have my internet back so I shall leave you and indulge myself with an hour of surfing then collapse, a snoring mess, next to the Girlf. She will moan and bitch about it tomorrow but tomorrow is another day.
Goodnight all and God bless.
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