Confined Cocktails #48

 I hope you're in a cocktail mood. I certainly am - I had forgotten I'd ordered some fancy cocktails from the Manhattans Project (which Kate introduced me to). My awful post delayed them but they turned up on Wednesday and are currently in the freezer. I haven't decided which one I'll defrost for tonight, so you get a picture of last night's wine instead. Maybe it'll be the Gin and It, or maybe I'll go for the slightly scarier Corn & Oil which seems to involve Falernum - apparently a go-to cocktail option these days. I thought it was an expensive wine from about the turn of the Christian Era, but that just shows I'm still a cocktail novice. 

I've also got a *lot* of blood oranges, so there might be a negroni with the gin swapped out for citrus tomorrow. Vitamings still a priority. 

I say I hope you're in a cocktail mood, but I have my doubts. You may well want to do something nice for yourself, and say hello, and all the positive things that have come out of 47 previous Confined Cocktails... or just the realisation it is exactly 11 months since we first said "let's do cocktail hour on Saturday" may make you cringe. I am a bit in the latter camp at the moment. Not exactly struggling, but feeling very heavy weather about the whole thing. It's been a long time since normal, and my last anniversaries of freedom are passing fast.

Maybe we'll feel brighter for Monday's roadmap (in England, I realise it's different elsewhere). But I doubt it'll be a glorious release, and if it was I'd be terrified, so... maybe not. 

All of which is why I want us to look ahead to One Year of All This with a bit of joy. 20 March, Confined Cocktails Night, and a Night For All Hashtags (#ConfinedKitchen, #UnconfinedWalks, #JacobinDay, hell #ConfinedBookswap if you like!). Let's make party food in a cheerful #ConfinedCookalong. Let's toast one another in liquid of choice for being a part of the mutual propping-up system which has kept this year more bearable, and has even created some joy. (Certainly for me!)

Which is why I've commissioned the amazing Vanessa Woolf to tell us a story, whose recording I'll share on 20 March. I first attended one of Vanessa's stories at a buzzy, busy Christmas party at the Royal Academy, with hundreds of people scooting around in a way that seems unimaginable now. But since then I've been to plenty more, which are often smaller, more outdoor, and less mainstream, hidden in nooks the world doesn't always see. In a cathedral retrochoir. In a cemetery, surrounded by ghosts. Beside a bonfire in a community garden. On the Thames foreshore as the sun sets. Some of those feel like the kind of event we might even get back to.

 

Vanessa has always been a bit magic - including online in These Strange Times

Nearer the time, I'll tell you a bit more about the story Vanessa is telling for us (and why I picked it). And about how you can join in a little more actively, if you please. But for now I'll just tell you that the first story I heard her tell was of Persephone. You'll know that one. The descent to the Underworld, the desperation of Demeter, her rescue... and the fatal pomegranate seeds that mean she has to go back, year on year. What with the passing of time, the food theme, and the difficult months over winter followed by the emergence of spring, I was tempted to pick that story. It resonates at the moment for sure - and in a good way. Spring is coming!