HEALTH RATHER THAN WEALTH

Well, the doctors are constantly on about it, despite some of them drinking like fish. 

Funny expression that...do fish actually drink the water they swim in? As WC Fields once said – possibly more than once – when explaining why he preferred his whisky without water: "Fish *!+^ in it."

I can't actually write what he said...this is far too upright a forum. And Bill Fields was, as most people will know, infrequently upright.

But to get back to the point – doctors and their ilk are always on at the rest of us to lead a healthy lifestyle. So, in the interests of prolonging healthy life, I've concocted a little something that will put years on you.

No, that's not right...take years off you, I mean.

It's a well-balanced cocktail that has resonances in World War II, during which the wealthy and well connected – some of them spies – carried on in the old fashioned way in London's top hotels as if the only thing that had changed was the lack of a decent butler.

Not for us the Old Fashioned...

Not for us the sumptuous, gin-heavy Gibson or Dry Martini.

Not in this blog episode at any rate.

No, what we're after here is using up the ingredients lying around in the (cocktail) cupboard...waste not want not...a bit of make do and mend in the way of our antecedents – not the idle rich sort.

If you discount the alcohol in it, the drink in question might be regarded as a real tonic, a pick-me-up...something you could munch a couple of before you go to work. Assuming you require to be compos mentis at work, that is. But who wants a job like that?

In my case, I had a few things lying about, items that were beginning – as a very tidy person – to get on my nerves. Items such as a small bottle of apricot brandy, untouched and unanticipated; the dregs of a bottle of triple sec and some five-day old fruit.

There are those who would just have chucked the liquid down the sink and the fruit in the bin, yet being a recycling-minded cove, I put my mind to the test.

What to call it though..? I'll keep thinking as I write. 

Meanwhile – and you'll appreciate the essence of the possibility of an early spring here – the working title:

HEALTH DRINK

Ingredients:

2 fl oz apricot brandy

1 fl oz triple sec

1/2 fl oz Rose's lime juice 

Juice of three clementines

Juice of half lemon

Good dash of orange bitters

Method:

Place four ice cubes in shaker

Add remainder of ingredients

Shake vigorously

Pour into cocktail glasses adorned with slice of fresh lemon

Serves four.

Speaking of the war and the inclusion of clementines reminds me of Winston Churchill and his beloved wife, Clementine, or "Dear Clemmie", as he called her by way of an endearment.

We could call this cocktail, therefore, Dear Clemmie, in memoriam of distant times when things were great for some, crap for the bulk.

Take a peek at the following and you'll be desperate certainly for a wee snifter...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUzQy4mmT3Q