Throw in one government special adviser, add a dash of Gilbert and Sullivan and stir

One of the things that I think might outlast our current, if slightly eased, state of lockdown and take us into the “new normal” in a helpful way, is the increased amount of stuff we have discovered can be brought straight to our door. Delivery is the new retail and plaudits all round to those beleaguered businesses who have shown creativity, intrepidity and sheer hard work to keep themselves and their employees going.

Being a wino of many years’ standing (or lurching), I’m already ordering by the case but was thrilled to hear this week of a service delivering cocktails direct to the populace.

Apparently, there is also a new product rejoicing in the name of Novel-Tea (other cocktails are available) which mixes, among other things, gin and Earl Grey. I know someone whose Christmas present has just been solved in one fell swoop…

Mixing it has, as things stand, been something that we can get at home, as the booze cupboard has been raided to the very rear so that hitherto spurned flagons of odd, not to say off-putting, hooch can be called into action. Who knew we had angostura bitters lurking in the depths? Or voddy of which the Russians were happily ignorant?

The only new skills I can honestly claim to have acquired during lockdown are as a mixologist. Bloody Marys have become (in my honour) Bloody Nellies when made with gin. And the old man, who is an aniseed addict, came up with an example of Spanish firewater called (aptly) “Old Man’s Cocktail”

– a tantalising mix of anis and brandy. Oof! There should be a law against it. Or maybe only “guidance”, which nobody will take any notice of anyway.

With that in mind, just think how much better it’s going to be when all this virus malarkey has died down (hopefully before most of the population has) and Brexit bites. What new consumable delights await us then?

And, of course, how much happier we will all be without the petty and malign influence of unelected bureaucrats who don’t give a stuff about observing our precious customs and freedoms. Cheers!

A new word and I’m wise

I learned a new word this week. Actually, I learned several, most of them loosely connected to the antics of a certain public figure and thus completely unsuitable for reproduction in a family newspaper.

To digress for a mo, without wishing to go into this sorry charade in any more detail than has already been minutely dissected all over the rest of the media, I would like to make the point that there is nothing new in this. I am no great fan of Gilbert and Sullivan but you have to recognise the contemporary significance of what they were presenting to the public back in the heady days of the Victorian era. That was when W S Gilbert’s libretto for The Mikado presents an all-powerful public functionary (The Lord High Everything Else, who has cleaned up most of the main jobs of government “and the salaries attached to them”) making the excuse that one of his own previous statements, questioned by another character, was: “Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.”

Bald and unconvincing, indeed. I should (taking in vain the name of that self-same production’s anti-hero, the Lord High Executioner) Ko-Ko.

Be that as it may, my new word of the week is “malaphor”. I kind of knew what it was before I heard it; I just didn’t know that that was what it was called. It’s basically, and I quote: “An informal term for the mixing of two aphorisms, idioms or cliches.”

A portmanteau mash-up, then or, in current educational parlance, a blend.

Some of the best ones are belters, it must be said. “It’s as easy as falling off a piece of cake” is one of my favourites.

Vaguely related to that is: “It’s the icing on the crop.” How about: “The sacred cows have come home to roost”? and keeping up the bovine image: “Until the cows freeze over.” Or:

Spurned flagons of odd hooch can be called into action

“He’s burning the midnight oil at both ends”?

My Auntie Julie had a brilliant one which I have often, especially in the recent political era, had cause to call upon, even for previous appearances in these pages: “They’ve buttered their bread,” she used to state, firmly, “and they’ll have to lie on it.”

What could be more apt in the current climate? Except, perhaps, for: “It’s not rocket surgery.” Or: “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

Of course, saving the presence of the great Gilbert, who nailed all this stuff bang to rights (if I can mix my malaphors) 135 years ago, there is always the option to rewrite completely some of these sage sayings for a new era.

Something along the lines of: “There’s none so blind as those who will not see far enough to drive to Barnard Castle and back.”

Or even: “You can lead a special adviser to a press conference but you can’t make him resign”?

Home-delivery cocktails have now been added to the mix as determined businesses get creative during lockdown