It’s a sad day when
you pour your last drop of sloe gin several weeks before the onset of spring.
Last winter my modest hoard didn't see me through January.
With temperatures on the Moor plummeting to minus fifteen and living at the
time in a house without central heating this caused no small amount of
consternation. Last Autumn I planned ahead. Determined not to be caught out I
imagined harvesting so much fruit that I would have to invent summer cocktails
to accommodate the oversupply. However, after searching in public and private
hedgerows until my hands bled I started to lose hope. That was until one day in
late October. In a moment similar to
Dorothy’s, in The Wizard of Oz, when she realises that home had always been
within her grasp, I discovered that the farm where I spend most of my days was
bursting full, hedgerow after hedgerow, of both sloes and bullaces. Happiness had been in my backyard all along.
Yesterday, as I sipped my last dram, with dismay I wondered how one could
consume five litres of gin in eight weeks and not notice.
