Good spirits / Let’s bring back elevenses |
Join me, if you will, for a short stroll down the Charing Cross Road, back in the days when it was festooned with bookshops and Morris Oxfords. At Cambridge Circus, there was a large catering equipment shop owned by my great-uncle, Bill Farnsworth. He made it big when he sold water coolers to the American military. Above the enormous ground-floor showroom was his counting house, where men in tailored suits laboured over ledgers on high sloping desks, dipping their nibs into ink pots. This would have been about 1960.
Were you to have a meeting with Bill in his office, say in the late morning, he would invariably turn to his walnut drinks cabinet and offer you a glass of something reviving and strong; a sherry, port or brandy, perhaps. Armagnac? It’s very good. How better to discuss a delicate matter of business than with something that eases the conversation and warms you from the inside out? A glass of Graham’s vintage port beats an Excel spreadsheet any day of the week.
And that’s what was expected then; it’s what people did once upon a better time. Come 11 o’clock in the morning, or perhaps 10.30, you had elevenses. Even the word has pleasing, reassuring ring to it. There might be cup of tea and a frosted bun, or just as likely, a small glass of something refreshing: a sharpener, a livener – a little of bit what you like to raise the spirits on a cold winter morning.
I’m pretty certain that every James Bond from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig was offered a glass of........