Dutch courage

Like all basically honest people, Susan is hopeless at keeping stuff to herself. She has what we poker players call tells, little bodily movements that indicate she's uncomfortably aware of not giving you the whole truth. 

So my suspicions are aroused when she sets down two clinking glasses that sparkle in the low rays from the first sun we've seen in three days at Portavadie, and says. "They asked if I wanted Hendricks. But it's expensive. I said their own brand was fine."

Then she blinks twice and looks away.

"Good thinking," I tell her, lifting the cool drink to my lips and savouring the tang of citrus, juniper and quinine that bursts fresh from the most popular drink in the galaxy. "Our holiday kitty is getting low and all gin tastes the same anyway."

"You don't half talk bollocks at times," she says, gazing at the bars of pink cloud above the wind-rippled waters of Loch Fyne.

"Not at all," I tell her. "Malt whisky is by far the most complex distilled spirit. Everybody knows that. A good malt has hundreds of subtle aromas, with their origins in the water, the air, the cask, the peat and the intricate chemistry of ageing. 

"Vodka and gin are just raw alcohol for people with soft brains who want to get pissed by following fashion and knocking back kiddy drinks called cruiser, breezer, bruiser, greaser, soft screw, kiss mix and mudshake."

I take another sip and deliver the clincher. "Vodka is just distilled potato juice."

She refuses to be clinched. "Forget vodka," she says. "There is more to gin than you realise, pal. Your problem is you don't listen. You just go off on one. So you'll never learn any more than you know now."

"But that's loads," I tell her. "If I put more in it'll shove important stuff out, like how to drink beer and put my socks on. When I was young my brain was like a Dyson, sucking up great swathes of science and philosophy."

"But it blew a fuse long ago," she says. "Because it hoovered up too much half-chewed gum and balls of fluff. You need to get those out and more good stuff in."

"Go on then," I sigh. "Tell me about gin." 

She takes a long sip through the black, bendy straw favoured by big girls and poseurs, brushes a bumblebee away with the back of her hand and says, "Gin is a fairly modern drink. 

"But it comes from jenever, a traditional Dutch tipple flavoured with juniper berries and botanicals - a secret mix of herbs and spices. British soldiers are supposed to have drunk jenever for its calming effect before battle, which is where the term Dutch courage comes from."

"That's actually quite interesting," I tell her.

"Shut up and listen, Stephen," she tells me.

"Hendricks is a modern gin made in Scotland in a traditional way," she says. "They use two old stills bought at auction, which produce very different styles of spirit that they blend together. Besides the botanicals and aromatic juniper, they also use essence of cucumber and rose petal. The result is the 'best gin in the world', according to the Wall Street Journal."

"Well if I believed all that, I might have been tempted to get myself one and just say I'd bought the cheap stuff," I tell her.

She blinks twice and looks away. 

"You sneaky rat," I say and she smiles, sips her Hendricks and studies the sunset.

"I like holidays," she tells me.

As dragons play

"You can't beat a nice cup of tea," Rachel tells me in Tchai-Ovna, the house of tea, overlooking the River Kelvin. 

"Yes you can," I say. "Tea's too dry. So is wine. I like my drinks wet, cool and thirst-quenching."

"So that would be beer," she says.

"Correct," I say.

"Tea is thirst-quenching," she insists, lifting the blue china bowl of oolong in both hands and sipping daintily."It's why it's the most popular drink in the world, apart from water."

"I've heard that," I say. "It's baffling."

"Two billion people drink tea every morning ," she says. "Two billion people are wrong and you're right?"

"Wouldn't be the first time," I say, taking a sip of my Dragon's Eye, the tea she's chosen for me. "How can liquid be dry?" 

"I know this," she says. "Give me a minute."

So I pick up the chunky menu and browse, while she dredges her memory. Dozens of teas are listed, each with its own story. Dragon's Eye, would you believe, is "a good quality tea to calm the nerves and sharpen the senses, while relaxing under an ancient, gnarled tea tree, as dragons play in the air with plumes of fire."

"Got it," Rachel says, bringing me back to earth with a bump - I always fancied myself as a dragonrider. "It's the tannins in the tea," she says. "They combine with stuff in your saliva to give that dry feel on your tongue."

"You learn something new every day," I say.

"Especially if you don't know much," she says, smiling to soften the sting. "Tannins combine with milk, if you put it in your tea, which leaves less to make your mouth dry."

"Fascinating," I say, slightly disengaged, since part of me is still up there, playing with plumes of fire.

"Am I boring you?" she asks.

"No, no," I tell her, and try to think of an intelligent question. "Would it be tannins that make wine dry too?"

"Yes and no," she says.

"See I've always thought that's a stupid answer," I say, forgetting to smile. "It must be either yes or no. Can't be both."

"That's because you crave certainty," she says. "You don't like fuzzy grey areas."

"Not true," I say. "I pretty much am a fuzzy grey area." 

"You are," she says. "But you need to open yourself more to uncertainty. Embrace ambiguity. It makes life interesting."

"I'll try," I promise. "Why yes and no about dry wine?"

"Yes, wine has tannins, especially red wine. No, that's not what they mean by dry wine."

My attention span is starting to struggle. But the dragon's eye has calmed my nerves and sharpened my senses. "Go on," I say.

"Dry in wine just means not sweet," she says. "All the sugar from the grapes has turned to alcohol. So you can have dry wine with any amount of tannins, or none - or sweet wine, come to that."

"Why are they there?" I ask, since she's clearly enjoying pulling this stuff out of her head.

"They come from the grapes," she says. "Lots of plants use them in their leaves and unripe fruit to stop getting eaten."

"But fruit wants to get eaten," I say. "It's how seeds spread."

"So the tannins get less astringent - softer - as the grape ripens," she says. "Also during winemaking, which changes them in lots of complicated ways."

"Well, well," I say.

"Lesson over,"  she says. "You know what I like most about tea? 

"That it lets you air your vast knowledge in public places," I say.

"Of course," she says. "But mostly that it's a thread of culture connecting me to a long line of tea-drinkers, right back through history. It's a civilised activity that brings people together in an oasis of calm, no matter how hard life is for them."

I stare at her over the china. "And I thought it was just brown stuff that feels like socks in your mouth."

"Would you like another pot of tea?" she asks.

"Yes," I tell her. "And no."

Cycles

"See that bicycle wheel behind you," my son says, as we share a companionable coffee in the kitchen, the only space in his new flat not already silted up by art in progress or the tools he makes it with.

"I do," I tell him. "A fine-looking wheel, if incongruous in a kitchen. Is it concept art?"

"No, it's a bicycle wheel."

"It's just that I once saw a teaspoon painted pink in a picture frame," I tell him. "I was told that art is whatever an artist says is art."

He sips from his mug and makes a little moue. "What do you think of this stuff?" he asks, reaching for the packet and reading aloud: "'Brimming with Latin spirit, this is the perfect convivial coffee.'"

He tosses it on the table, spilling dark beans on the cream surface. "What does that mean?" he demands. "It's a daft phrase from a bad writer. 'Brimming with Latin spirit' my arse. It's just coffee."

"But a perfectly pleasant coffee," I tell him. "Give the guy a break. Words in the mind of a writer are like objects in an artist's hands."

He looks at me suspiciously. "Did you write it?" he asks. "Have you been bought by the marketing moguls?"

"Not yet," I tell him. "But I've written similar stuff. Words have sounds, sense and clouds of connotation. Good writers use all those. It's not just about meaning. What if I asked for the meaning of those decaying apples inside coffee-stirrer scaffolding you've got in the lounge?"

He flashes the smile that's warmed me since I first saw it thirty years ago. "I'd say it shows that creation and decay are complementary aspects of a single essence," he tells me. "But I'd know that's postmodern at best and probably bollocks. Art is process and ambiguity, not products and precise meaning."

"So is writing," I say. "Just not so much.

"But there has to be a core of connection," he insists. "Words need a hard wire to earth or those fluffy clouds will float them away."

"Unlike that bicycle wheel," I say.

"Exactly," he says. "That's about as grounded as you get. But it also carries a modicum of metaphorical meaning."

I drain the dregs, place the mug on the table and stand up ready to go. "Which is what?" I ask. "Without spokes there is no centre? Rubber makes the world go round? Enlighten me, oh wise one."

"Choose your own cheesy cliché," he tells me. "For me it's circles. My mum sends me five texts at three in the morning complaining I never talk to her. Which is annoying, so I don't answer. So she sends me five more texts, which is annoying so ... Everything moves in circles."

"Except rockets, arrows, bullets, planes, trains, automobiles, pawns, knights and bishops." I say, as he collects our coffee mugs and places them in the stainless-steel sink.

"Except those," he agrees, flashing the self-deprecating smile again. "But next time around they probably will."