It was Summer a few years ago. My friend S and I were on an overnighter to Edinburgh. So, galleries seen, Harvey Nics perused, beautiful old buildings admired and cases deposited at the hotel, we ventured out for the evening.
We began by having a “livener” in the nearest bar and as we were in Edinburgh I plumped for Whisky. As I am not an informed dram taker , we decided I should select one that began with A. Now for the un-Edinburghered out there, a bar there would feature countless bottles of many types of whisky, so S’s idea seemed a sound one, based on common sense.
Then time for a meal which took care of a couple of glasses of Red wine. Then we decided to see where the wind blew us.
The next bar didn’t seem to be for us (we were told we couldn’t sit on those stools as they belonged to someone) so one dram then off. By now S had decided to join me with the national drink so it made more than sense to move on to B. You may now know where this leads to!
The next bar was much nicer so C and D were drunk, then on to our final port of call which we left when they locked up!
We sat on stools at the bar and as the bar staff soon cottoned on to our “game” each empty glass would be greeted by one of them, with either ” so which letter next ladies?” or ” Right, which G do you want girls, as there are so many of them!”
A chap sat on the stool next to us at about 11pm and selected our next one for us and when we began to chat we discovered he was a sommelier from a rather grand hotel, although not a Scot but a Dutchman! He lived in the flat above the bar, told us he had had a row with his girl so had come down for a drink. He was a great help as we tried a few more until midnight when we all had to leave. We thanked him for his expert knowledge in our quest for alphabetical perfection, then giggled and sang (apparently ! ) our way back to the hotel.
The following morning we decided the best course of action was a nice ride on a tourist bus that gave us an excellent guided tour of the city while we recovered, all the while blaming the “dodgy” Jack Daniels we drank back at the Hotel.
To this day I really don’t remember getting as far as M, but S assures me we did! I console myself with the fact that there were 2 letters that didn’t feature in the Whisky lexicon. It felt like a smashing idea at the time, but I don’t think N to Z will be happening just yet.
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