A bowler hat, Hello, After Eights and a very fine festive drink

Abundance: 11 December 2024

Wearing a bowler hat, he walked towards me easily, confidently, as if life was a Hawaiian shirt and the air slightly thinner for his limbs to pass through than for the rest of us. A smile lifted his cheeks: ‘Good morning, sir!’ neither fell nor fired from his lips. I smiled back a ‘Good morning to you too’, and on our opposite ways we went, smiling¹.

He seemed both of the past and from the future. A slice of yesterday, with a demeanour entirely present, and an ease and grace of someone who knew it was all going to work out ok in the end².

My phone pinged in my pocket. The wind picked up and I wanted to be home, kettle whistling. Maybe if I imagine it so.

When I was a kid, I thought that if I focused all of my imagination (in Moment A) on a future event (Moment B) with an intensity that pictured myself (in Moment B) recalling this moment of projection (Moment A) with utter lucidity, it would make the time between the imagining and the occurrence vanish. Time travel. So clear was the sense that this vanishing of between-time could occur that it would make me momentarily dizzy or lost to the current world. When I later arrived in that future moment, just as I’d imagined it, I’d feel the elastic snap with the earlier moment of imagining.

I remain unconvinced of the impossibility of time travel partly thanks to the text received as I passed Mr Bowlerhat Man. Film from a day-long gig I went to in 1986 had just found its way to Youtube, a friend who I was there with, informed me. How ridiculous, we joked, that the us-in-impossibly-younger-packaging, lubricated as we were by a great deal of cider and more, tried to hold on to every minute of that 12 hours of music that it might tattoo our minds, not even capable of imagining a future where our same eyes might be able to once again take in exactly what they saw that evening, these 38 years later, this morning - me in a park, he in central London - thanks to a small device in my trouser pocket giving me access to almost any piece of information I require at a millisecond’s notice. 1986³-me would totally have had being able to watch that gig - or a match happening on the other side of the world, while it happened, on a device attached to no obvious power source - in the middle of a park, at least as far up the ladder of impossibilities as time travel.

And so now, as I write this on a piece of what looks like glass that’ll show me anything I want to see, and a great deal I don’t, for an audience scattered across the world who will read these words so quickly after the consonants and vowels are strung together, I’m aware that this is an impossibility little-me couldn’t even have imagined as science fiction. And yet here it is, as every day as renting - yes, renting - your telly was back then.

Nutmeg Brandy Alexanders

I often think of Paul McCartney and John Lennon in the run up to Christmas. As a very young kid, I wanted little more than Mull of Kintyre not to be number one at what I could - even at that age - tell would be our last Christmas as a family. Of course it was number 1; the eating of numerous consecutive After Eights ruined by Top of the Pops showing, once again, the video where ever-more people gathered to sing the same thing over and over to a backdrop of whinging bagpipes. I had no idea what a Mull of Kintyre was: a place so distant as to be without an amusements, I discovered. In an impossibility unimaginable then⁴ - beyond even time travel and the internet - I am about to see Paul McCartney, with that old friend, almost half a century later. He will almost certainly play this beautiful song about John Lennon.

I often think of John Lennon in the run up to Christmas. He died in the second week of the month; I wrote about it here. Also, I make this cocktail - a version of Lennon’s favourite - only around now; it just feels very suited to the season. It’s from my book SPICE/a cook’s companion⁵.

A couple of years ago, I sat on a coach with two friends, alighting here and there at various Beatles landmarks around Liverpool, the roundabout at the top of Penny Lane where ‘a pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray’, among them. Of the many ordinary locations and unremarkable spots made extraordinary by their place in our consciousness, I was struck by Strawberry Field, now a visitor attraction, back in Lennon’s childhood a Salvation Army children’s home, where the young John hopped the garden wall to play in the grounds. ‘They’ll string you up if they catch you’ his aunt told him; all those years later he sang it was ‘nothing to get hung about’. The Brandy Alexander was Lennon’s favourite drink and he always hops into my mind when I have one. It’s traditionally made with creme de cacao and nutmeg grated on top, but I reckon this version is even better. That is, I think it's not too bad.

Makes 2

80ml brandy
40ml nutmeg syrup (see below)
50ml double cream
½-1 tsp cocoa

Add everything into a cocktail shaker with a good handful of ice. Shake until the shaker makes your hand cold. Strain into cocktail glasses.

Nutmeg syrup

The tiny Caribbean island of Grenada is responsible for a fifth of the world’s nutmeg, and there are numerous commercial syrups using the island’s most precious spice: as is often the case, homemade knocks shop bought into a cocked hat. Try it drizzled over pancakes and ice creams, as a cordial lengthened with sparkling water, over porridge, and in cocktails. You can sieve out the nutmeg when bottling this, but I like to allow the infusion to continue and intensify: you can always sieve it out later if it’s in danger of getting too strong. Store in fridge for a long lifespan.

Makes 400ml or so

330g caster sugar
170g light brown sugar
2 whole nutmegs, bashed

Add the sugars and 350ml water to a medium sized pan and bring to a simmer, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add the nutmeg and simmer very gently for a few minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool a little before funnelling into a bottle, nutmeg and all.

1. One of the pleasures of the morning dog walk is noticing how differently people say (or avoid saying) hello - some dragging the word out as if enjoying and not wanting to be done with it, others punching it out like a smash at tennis - and wondering why that might be.

2. Of the many John Lennon quotes, this might be my favourite ‘Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end’.

3. 1986 is impossible to communicate. Only a few years before, if you wanted to watch a TV programme you had to be in when it was on or it was forever gone; the arrival of the video recorder meant you could record it to watch later - a genuinely life-changing shift. The internet was still 6 years away from waking up everyone’s ability to interact, for information to be instantly shared. People still rang up a building in the hope that the person they wanted to speak to was in it.

4. He was ancient to my young eyes

5. Paid subscribers in the UK can buy a signed copy for only £3.50 plus p&p rather the the RRP of £25. See what great value being a paid subscriber is…