It's easy to get one's timelines mixed up. With shoes, it's generally known that white comes after Memorial Day. Of course, the whole new category of "winter whites" has rendered this mandate unrecognizable.
With planting, it's generally considered that mid-April is safe-- at least in central Pennsylvania, where we hover between climate zones 5 and 6.
With gin and tonics, things get a bit more slippery. When, precisely, does G&T season begin?
There is, no doubt, an element of nominalism to the opening of this season. G&T season begins when one says so. But it's not just up to anybody to make such proclamations. One must have taste in order to be a bellwether. And thus judgment: G&T season begins, as we all know, whenever it must.
But the first outdoor meal of spring is a different matter altogether. It's possible, after all, to dine al fresco in almost any kind of weather, provided that one has access to the proper equipment. Look at the French. On the greyest February morning the sidewalk cafés remain packed. For there are awnings to shelter patrons from the drizzle, and heat-lamps to stave off the chill.
Nonetheless, it was with no small degree of seasonal affirmation on Sunday evening that we trotted out the barbecue grill, moved table and chairs onto the lawn, and ate dinner outside. We'd been flying kites with the N. family that afternoon, whereupon, as we ran barefoot across the still-dormant grass, the idea of a collective meal arose. We scrambled around the supermarket like it was Memorial day: hot dogs, ground beef, steak, asparagus, radishes, cherry tomatoes, buns, Rocky Road ice cream.
Then there was a mad rush to prepare the grill, whose gas canister ran out midway through the asparagus. We quickly fetched another, and managed to place food on the table while the evening was still bright. All the same, it was still a race. The food, and the diners, became too cold to continue outdoors beyond the initial rush. The meal ended as quickly as it had begun. And so, with A. in her bath, and with R. and her mother back home across the street, the two of us who remained finished our Rocky Road ice cream in the dining room.
But it was a barbecue all the same. An early effort, perhaps. But, like the shoots and tendrils coming alive in the garden, it was only the beginning.
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prandio ergo sum
3 comments:
I can't complain about a lovely post. But I will. Because you leave unanswered, or open-ended, the question of a G'n'T season ending and beginning.
I see your mistake. Most things do have some sort of beginning. Life and death and all that. And many drinks do have a perfect environment, climate, condition. Cold beers may be drunk the whole year through, but an icy lager after playing frisbee for three hours in the hot Summer sun is quite perfect; an ale by a wood fire on a cold night may be the best sip of ale all year. And so one might think the same is true of Gin and Tonic.
But Gin and Tonic is perennial. It accompanies any particular mood, so long as that mood is a Gin and Tonic mood. Feeling a bit blue, or a bit edgy? Need a bit of a come-down after too much Guinness? Or, as the Oasis song has it, "feeling supersonic, give me a Gin and Tonic"?
What a versatile drink! It is perfect either as a thirst quencher or the first drink of the night. I do not want to give the impression that it is the only thing one should drink and I certainly wouldn't claim it is the best drink in every situation. But it is the only drink that always responds to you and your needs. One is always grateful for a Gin and Tonic, not indebted to it.
To add a complaint: there are few things in life more disheartening than seeing a perfectly good bartender pour too much gin into a glass and then squirt soda water from the soda tap (after casually making sure not to push the cola button). That is not a "gin and tonic". It is a vile concoction and beneath the dignity of the most scabrous barkeep.
If I weren't alone tonight in child-care duties, I would go make myself one right now.
mmm... grilled asparagus... so, when asparagus pokes its head up, then spring begins... forget about those stupid groundhogs, which never tasted very good anyway.
And so, to answer your very complex question about G&T, although one could correlate G&T season with mosquitos (the quinine in the tonic being the original preventative medicine against malaria), that's not so mouth-watering. I think I'd correlate G&T season with the cultivation of okra... mmmm, fried okra and G&T... of course, since the invention of the refrigerated train car, maybe nothing I am saying matters.
I would say "At the risk of insulting booga face", but that is just a bit too piquant.
I find myself quite swayed by Mary Douglas' insistence that biomedical explanations are themselves at best partial (Jews and Moslems don't eat pork because of trichinosis, G'n'Ts are so popular amongst the British because of the antimalarial effect of the tonic in the tropics (which also explains their popularity in Milton Keynes!), etc.) These biomedical explanations offer something that merits a raised eyebrow, but little more.
And okra? I've never had the stomach for it . . . But asparagus. mmmmmmm. I'm with you there, booga face.
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