Very Wet in Every Sense
28/09/06 22:53
A blog.
This is a relatively new English word with two
meanings. If you’re not a journalist, it means: “Hey,
I’m a writer! I’ve got a column!” If you already
scribble for a living, it means: “Here’s something I
couldn’t sell.”
So when Dan Dunn, the eponymous Imbiber hisownself calls me and wants to know if I’ll blog for his new website, I promise him solemnly to send some copy. And here it is—a few hundred words I wouldn’t even try to sell.
Dunn and I go way back. OK, maybe just back, but it feels like way back. Met him on a sailboat in July, 1999, the night before the Classic Malt Cruise, a week-long, very wet in every sense, tall ship sail through the Hebrides, punctuated by nightly visits to distillery parties where talented Scotsmen pour endless drams, with no cash register in sight. Some people might call it a junket; I like to think of it as research.
Dunn was perched on a bunk in the basement (I’m not real good on nautical terms) of a 105-foot brigantine, freshly fired. By a newspaper editor. For going on that very junket. Violated their code of ethics, he said they said. He was a little fuzzy on the concept himself. First thing he wanted to know was if it was possible to earn a living as a freelancer. I told him sure, largely because I had a fat Conde Nast contract in hand at the time, and it looked easy from where I was sitting. Nothing to it, I suggested. Guy with your obvious charm and way with words, be like falling off a bar stool.
He needed instruction, of course, in the whiskey department. I believe his tipple of choice at the time was strawberry schnapps and Fanta with a splash of grain alcohol. Whiskey was, of course, like mother’s milk to me. I’d been drinking whiskey, along with sundry other distilled and fermented beverages, when Dunn was drinking, well, mother’s milk. He was, however, a quick study. Never loath to stay up late, tasting, learning, learning, tasting, until, by the end of the cruise, he was exhausted with the academic effort and could scarcely be roused from his bunk. I sat by his bed, applied cold compresses, and imparted the tricks of this dismal trade, the mysteries of the gerund, the intricacies of the semi-colon, the ways into the minds of editors.
So I feel a little responsible for him. And now, with this invitation to contribute to his website, Dunn becomes an editor himself, and I feel the crushing weight of failure. Like Jeffrey Dahmer’s Sunday school teacher. Like Bill O’Reilly’s mother. I reminded him, in that phone call, that Mussolini was an editor, and told him I’d soldier on.
Which I shall, with the occasional, unsaleable, screed about the various waters of life in these pages. Watch this space.
So when Dan Dunn, the eponymous Imbiber hisownself calls me and wants to know if I’ll blog for his new website, I promise him solemnly to send some copy. And here it is—a few hundred words I wouldn’t even try to sell.
Dunn and I go way back. OK, maybe just back, but it feels like way back. Met him on a sailboat in July, 1999, the night before the Classic Malt Cruise, a week-long, very wet in every sense, tall ship sail through the Hebrides, punctuated by nightly visits to distillery parties where talented Scotsmen pour endless drams, with no cash register in sight. Some people might call it a junket; I like to think of it as research.
Dunn was perched on a bunk in the basement (I’m not real good on nautical terms) of a 105-foot brigantine, freshly fired. By a newspaper editor. For going on that very junket. Violated their code of ethics, he said they said. He was a little fuzzy on the concept himself. First thing he wanted to know was if it was possible to earn a living as a freelancer. I told him sure, largely because I had a fat Conde Nast contract in hand at the time, and it looked easy from where I was sitting. Nothing to it, I suggested. Guy with your obvious charm and way with words, be like falling off a bar stool.
He needed instruction, of course, in the whiskey department. I believe his tipple of choice at the time was strawberry schnapps and Fanta with a splash of grain alcohol. Whiskey was, of course, like mother’s milk to me. I’d been drinking whiskey, along with sundry other distilled and fermented beverages, when Dunn was drinking, well, mother’s milk. He was, however, a quick study. Never loath to stay up late, tasting, learning, learning, tasting, until, by the end of the cruise, he was exhausted with the academic effort and could scarcely be roused from his bunk. I sat by his bed, applied cold compresses, and imparted the tricks of this dismal trade, the mysteries of the gerund, the intricacies of the semi-colon, the ways into the minds of editors.
So I feel a little responsible for him. And now, with this invitation to contribute to his website, Dunn becomes an editor himself, and I feel the crushing weight of failure. Like Jeffrey Dahmer’s Sunday school teacher. Like Bill O’Reilly’s mother. I reminded him, in that phone call, that Mussolini was an editor, and told him I’d soldier on.
Which I shall, with the occasional, unsaleable, screed about the various waters of life in these pages. Watch this space.
|