Cocktail hour: O

Well, uproar here at JMP Towers with the news just in that Hermann, Hans' Bavarian cousin, may be coming to stay. Hermann, Hans reports, is short and plump and 'wholly without style'; his branch of the family fears that Hans has 'come off the rails', and this potential visit is likely to be something off a checking-up exercise on Hans' lifestyle. An exercise that Hans is likely to fail, I fear. He is going to take some emergency measures next week, including changing his subscriptions to You And Your Facecream and heat, to The Economist and Classic Car Monthly; whether this will be enough to convince onlookers that he is firmly onrail remains to be seen.  

Moreover, after picking up a cough after a particularly late night earlier this week, Hans has convinced himself that he has come down with swine fever, and has taken to spending the day on the sofa wearing his smoking cap and monogrammed dressing gown, moaning theatrically. Not all that different from his normal behaviour, but trying none the less.

In an effort to start thinking like someone who is very much onrail, Hans has chosen a classic, understated, masculine cocktail this week, as we hit O in his A to Z cocktail challenge: the Old Fashioned. Recipes vary, but Hans' is as follows: place a sugar cube and enough water just to dissolve it in a glass. Add a splash of Angostura bitters, and mix, so the sugar is dissolved. Add two measures of bourbon, and two or three ice cubes. Garnish with a twist of lemon peel.

This is one of my favourite cocktails, and like the Rusty Nail, great if you have a cold. 

And as you leave us Hans is off the sofa and back to his room to replace the H from Steps and Westlife posters on his walls with Constable prints. The place won't look the same.

PS Talking of swine fever, it keeps leading the BBC news with hushed talk of a 'global pandemic', but it can't be of much interest to the world at large if Google is to be believed: 'swine fever symptoms in humans' only brings up a measly 70,800 hits, compared to eg over 8,000,000 for 'Westlife'.