How many books are there in your bathroom?

It think I got my father's reading-in-the-bathroom gene.

When I was a little kid and my parents' friends would come to visit, sooner or later, the man would go into the bathroom and not come out for ages. Indeed, my mother would often send someone to knock on the Reading Room door to see if everything was OK. Dad kept a huge pile of Popular Mechanics in there. So yes, it was OK, if a bit uncivil start to finish.

Dad could leave his magazines in there with impunity but the rest of us couldn't. First, there wasn't room. It was the era of single family homes with but one small bathroom comprised of a sink on a pedestal (unless you were quite posh, in which case you had a cabinet under the sink), a toilet and a tub with shower. Two towel racks. End.

But it wasn't seemly to read in the bathroom, I expect, except when relaxing in a tub full of bubble bath. Then, however, one's books got splattered, and sometimes dropped in. I never saw the point of that. Reading when seated on other bathroom equipment sounded far more sensible. No splashing. No waterlogged dropped books. Just some entertainment while the business was completed.

When I grew up, I made no bones about books in the bathroom. By the time I owned a house, bathrooms had expanded and there was room i my bathroom for a little stand next to the toilet where I could put a pile of books or magazines. I developed the habit of having a bedroom book, a living room book, a breakfast table book and a bathroom book. I could then read four at once, more or less, and not worry about having to scout around and find the one I wanted to read next. Each one had its time and place.

I got less rigid about it as time went on. But joy of joys, my current bathroom has a large platform at the end of the tub, right next to the 'reading chair' on which I can place a container of bath salts, two rubber duckies, two bottles of bath oil, a stack of magazines and at least a half dozen books. I usually don't really keep that many there, and they tend to be quirky, especially now that the Kindle handles most of the "must" reading and the reference reading. The real books--the books I read for pleasure--stay next to my favorite chair in the living room.

So what's on my bathroom reading roster at the moment? Two issues of Cornwall Life; one issue of Devon Life; three recent copies of Waitrose supermarket's weekly newsprint publication full of recipes and wine tips, an ancient Trader Vic's book with "tasty beverage" recipes and Everyday Drinking by the late Kingsley Amis, introduction by the late Christopher Hitchens.

BTW, it doesn't bother me in the least that those involved with the drink books are all deceased. Trader Vic, i.e., Jules Bergeron, was 82 when he died. Amis was 73. Hitchens only 62, which might suggest drinkers are dying younger, but I don't believe it. An old friend who believed the ONLY thing to eat for lunch was a lobster salad and champagne--she was a former Ziegfeld girl--was still posing in swimsuits poolside at 79 and looking damn good.

Who'da thunk Barbara Stanwyck was a Ziegfield girl? My friend Dorothy was MUCH better endowed. (Wiki Commons)

I think I need to go buy some champagne and lobster now. I already have lettuce. I wouldn't mind looking like Dorothy did when I'm 79. Of course, the fact that I didn't have a Ziegfeld girl figure when I was 29 will be of no importance once everyone gets enough lobster and champagne into them.

A martini in a British pub? Impossible!

Beautiful! All the sorts of water this writer really loves...sea water, and fire water. (Wiki Commons)

A martini in a British pub? (Shirley, you jest...with my apologies to the late Leslie Nielsen.)

On some website someplace, I saw a reference the other day to ordering a martini in a British pub. It must have been a joke. There is no such thing as a martini in a British pub.

A British pub will give you a glass―small, large or huge―of any sort of alcoholic beverage made from hops and/or barley and maybe wheat and most certainly apples and pears. Indeed, cider is an alcoholic drink in England, as is perry, the pear version thereof.

You can get virtually any sort of liquor―Scotch, Irish, Canadian, sometimes Bourbon, Gin, Vodka, Rum―poured into a small glass, with or without a tiny ice cube (or more if you really, really insist). It will be a measured shot, measured by the UK version of  “the revenooers” for the purpose of collecting Her Majesty’s taxes on your inebriation attempt.

The tax man ruins a good buzz

You can get a wide range of specialty liquors, too, such as the ever-popular Bailey’s, Amaretto, Chambord…that sort of thing. Whichever of that sort of thing you order will also be served in a small glass, neat, as a measured shot. Which isn’t, frankly, enough to wet a bird’s whistle. Considering the alcoholic content of virtually all of such libations is so low, they ought to pour customers a water-glass portion, or at least a good couple of shots. But that would never do, all booze having been created equal as far as the almighty British tax man is concerned.

Despite the odd servings decreed by the tax man, you can clearly order, drink and especially pay for inebriating spiritous liquors in a British pub.

Stemmed glasses: Martinis, manhattans, cosmos….

What you can’t do is get a martini. Or a manhattan. Or an old fashioned. Or a tom collins. Or a cosmopolitan. You might, just might, get a Cuba libre. But you’ll be scorned, by gad.

As for the martini, even if you order it in a restaurant owned by the maker of a very venerable brand of gin, Plymouth (beloved of the British Navy for its strength and bite), you will get some horrific concoction including white vermouth and what the British call lemonade, which is actually more like a bottle of Sprite gone bad. I know this for a fact.

It seems, you see, that just as the British call a vacuum a Hoover (“I’ve got to hoover the floors, since the dog made such a mess” and so on), so they call French vermouth martini, mainly because the most prevalent brand of French (that is, white) vermouth in the UK is made by a company called―ta da!―Martini!

No elegant booze in the hinterlands of England

There are, to be sure, grand and wonderful cocktail bars in London. There’s even a swell membership club in Soho (London Soho, not New York Soho) called Milk & Honey that has all sorts of bona fide cocktails on its menu, although they do not specify a classic martini. Still, I would bet they’d make it for a member. And you have to be a member to enjoy an elegant quaff in a stemmed glass.

There’s also a Trader Vic’s in London. It’s rumoured to serve a staid, older crowd, so I expect that, in addition to the paper-umbrella festooned drinks and those served in a monkey-faced glass, you could get a classic martini. And you don’t have to be a member.

A new and popular boozy haunt in London is Mark’s Bar. While customers polled like it, they only like it 3 stars’ worth; the professionals give it 5. I’ll go with the pros on that; the bar attracts a lot of tourist riffraff, and what do they know, so how can you trust their opinion? I’ll bet they’d even ask for a Caesar salad with Thousand Island dressing, as they often do in Key West, or so I was told by a Casa Marina waiter some years back.  Anyway, visit the website for one of the most beautiful photos of cocktails I’ve seen in a while. I’d have put it up, but it’s copyrighted. Sigh.

I don’t live anywhere near London. But when I visit, I stay at The New Cavendish Club, members only. It’s a perk of my membership in the Society of Authors. As another SofA member said to me one morning as we both stayed there, it’s about time writers got some perks!  It is, and The New Cavendish Club is a darn good one. It almost makes me glad I chose to become a writer. And do, please, pay attention to all my words. I did write almost. The New Cavendish Club bartender will make a classic martini if asked. Or you can have a glass of champagne, and if it has gone a wee bit flat for being opened the day before, they’ll just open another.

In Tavistock, the closest sizeable town to me, you can get a martini at The Terrace. I know. I had one. But that’s the only place I can think of, and possibly that’s true because it is a restaurant owned by a pub owner and he knows his way around booze, even if he won’t mix you a straight-up drink served ice-cold in a stemmed glass in the pub side of the building, only in the chi-chi restaurant side.

It’s OK by me, though. I'm taking a photographer friend there for a birthday lunch next week…and hoping to get her looped a little on martinis so she’ll offer to shoot my next book jacket for free.

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