7 Reasons

Tag: limoncello

  • 7 Reasons That You Shouldn’t Knock on the Front Door When I’m in the Bath

    7 Reasons That You Shouldn’t Knock on the Front Door When I’m in the Bath

    Yesterday, while I was bathing, someone knocked on the front door.  They shouldn’t have.  Here are seven reasons why.

    A black and white picture of a man chopping wood with an axe. 1940s

    1.  Doubt.  I’m lying in the bath.  I’m wet.  I’m not about to get up to answer the door, it’ll be bloody cold standing on the doorstep with only a towel around my waist and five chest hairs to keep me warm, so of course I’m going to lie here.  But what if it’s important?  What if there’s a gas leak and they’ve come to alert me?  What if the house next door is on fire?  What if the police have come to warn me that there’s an axe-murderer on the loose?

    2.  Foreboding.  What if it is the axe-murderer?  I’m alone in the house with my cat.  An axe-murderer wouldn’t be satisfied with hacking the cat to death, that wouldn’t even be murder.  That would be animal cruelty.  That would probably be an assault to the dignity of the axe-murderer:  It would be a demotion from axe-murderer to cruel man (with axe).  He’d be a laughing stock.  He would be shunned by the other axe-murderers.  That would never do.

    3.  Fear.  What if he’s the sort of axe-murderer who doesn’t want to chop me into a barely identifiable pulp of blood, flesh and sinew right away?  What if he’s the kind that’s on the run and wants somewhere to hide for a while; menacing my cat with his axe in the living room while I tell the police at the door that I haven’t seen anyone and that I’m alone in the house?  I don’t want one of those.  It’ll be hours before my wife comes home and I can hide behind her.  Hours.

    4.  Terror.  What if he needs to hide out for a couple of days?  What in the hell would we feed him?  We’ve had snow here for two weeks and the shops haven’t had much in; all we would have to offer him are vast quantities of limoncello and Twiglets.  And I doubt that axe-murderers even like Twiglets.  After all, I bloody love Twiglets and I’m the total opposite of an axe-murderer; I’m a no-axed-not-murderer, or as we’re more commonly known, a victim.   So, the axe-murderer will have lots to drink, but nothing to eat.  So he’ll be drunk, and he’ll be cross.  He’ll be a drunken, angry, axe-murderer which, I rather suspect, is the worst sort.

    5.  Twiglets.  What if he does like Twiglets?  Because these aren’t just any Twiglets.  Oh no.  These are the Christmas Twiglets.  The Twiglets that I’m not allowed to touch.  The Twiglets that no one is allowed to touch, or even gaze directly at for a prolonged period.  Not until Christmas Twiglet season begins at 9pm on the 24th of December.  I’ve made that mistake before and there were consequences.  And now I know better than to breach the sanctity of the Christmas Twiglets.  In fact, I seem to remember that, following the incident that has come to be known as Christmas-Twiglet-gate, my wife told me that if I ever ate the Christmas Twiglets again (outside of the clearly defined time-frame) that she would kill me.  So that’s it.  It’s Hobson’s bloody choice.  If the axe-murderer likes Twiglets I can either tell him he can’t have any and he’ll kill me with an axe, or I can let him have them and my wife will kill me without an axe (with a handbag probably, or her soup).  Basically, I’m fucked.

    6.  Reflection.  When was the last time I saw an axe-murderer?  I haven’t seen any for ages.  I don’t think I’ve seen one since The Shining.  There used to be loads of them.  Absolutely bloody loads, but their numbers seem to have declined.  They seem to have had some sort of heyday in the late 1940s when they were menacing Fred MacMurray and Ida Lupino in a remote California farmhouse most weekends, and then their numbers appear to have dwindled away to nothing.  So, in all probability, it wasn’t an axe-murderer that knocked on my door about sixty minutes ago.

    7.  Resolution.  My fingers are wrinkly, I’m cold, and my left knee has literally turned blue.  I have other things to do.  I’m supposed to be writing tomorrow’s 7 Reasons piece.  I’m not even supposed to be thinking about the Christmas Twiglets.  I’m not allowed to do that until the 22nd.  You’ve just stolen an hour of my life and caused me think dangerous thoughts and turned my knee a funny colour (somewhere between cobalt and Prussian blue).  Damn you, whoever you are/were.  Next time, I’m coming down in my towel.  To my death, probably.

  • 7 Reasons That I’m Sick Of The Lemons

    7 Reasons That I’m Sick Of The Lemons

    On Monday, I started my bank holiday project: A batch of limoncello.  It’s a simple enough liqueur to make, requiring a couple of litres of vodka, some sugar and lemon zest.  A lot of lemon zest.  The zest of twenty-four lemons.  Here are seven reasons that I’m now sick of the lemons.

    A photo of several yellow whole rotator lemons. And a leaf.

    1.  Peeling Them.  Ever peeled a lemon?  It’s the second dullest activity known to man (or woman).  You have to be careful not to get any of the pith with the zest, so it takes a long time.  I peeled twenty-four of the things. I have no idea exactly how long I was in the kitchen, but I do know that I had a ginger beard when I emerged from it.  I had one when I went in too, but I was definitely in there for a very long time.  Peeling lemons.

    2.  Poor Planning.  “Errrr. Ummm. Errrr.  Have a lemon, darling.”  That’s what I said when my wife – not unreasonably – enquired what I was going to do with twenty-four peeled lemons.  This is because, caught up in my enthusiasm for making the limoncello, I had forgotten that a by-product of lemon zest is lemons.  Lots of lemons.  I decided to put them in the fridge, certain that we would be able to use them.

    3.  Juice.  Our fridge was already quite full.  So full, in fact, that I had to remove several jars of jam, a bag of onions that pre-dated the internet, and all – except for two – bottles of beer, to fit the large, overflowing bowl of peeled lemons in.  Eventually, two days later, desperate to free up fridge space for more beer, I had a brainwave.  Lemon juice.  I would juice half of the lemons.  This would free up space in the fridge and enable me to put beer in there.  Ever juiced twelve lemons?  It’s the dullest activity known to man (or woman).  After what seemed like a fortnight of squeezing lemons, I put the (surprisingly still quite full) bowl – now containing half the original number of lemons – back into the fridge.  Then I had to remove the remaining bottles of beer in order to make room for the two bottles of lemon juice.  Brilliant.

    4.  Drinks.  As there was now no cold beer in the house, and many, many lemons, I decided to have a cocktail week.  The things that I have drunk at home in cocktail week have included: lemon drop martinis, gin fizzes, whisky sours and tom collinseseseses.  Hic.  All of these cocktails contain lemon juice, of which there is still a lot.  Probably enough to keep Amy Winehouse in lemon-based cocktails for several months.  Still, one of the benefits of having had lemon-based cocktails all week is that they’re a perfect match for…

    5. Our Food.  The meals that we’ve eaten in the past four days have been (in no particular order): pancakes with sugar and lemon juice, linguine in lemon cream sauce with smoked salmon, fish finger sandwiches with tartar sauce and lemon, and home-made bread and lemon summer soup.  I have no idea what we’re having for tea this evening, but I sense that it may involve a lemon.  And I don’t want to eat any more lemons.  I think I may be turning yellow.  And then there’s…

    6.  The Smell.  The fridge smells of lemons.  The kitchen smells of lemons.  I smell of lemons.  My wife smells of lemons.  The entire ground floor of the house smells of lemons.  Our cat now lives in the garden because of the smell of lemons.  Our neighbours have been looking at us strangely all week, presumably because of the smell of lemons emanating from our house.  If you were to send a letter to:

    The house that smells of lemons,

    York.

    We would probably receive it.  Please do not send any circulars.  Or lemons.

    7.  The Lemons Are Seemingly Infinite.  Despite having consumed so many lemons that my blood is now 29% citric acid; despite having reduced half of their number to juice; despite having made my wife  consume so many lemons that she could possibly use it as grounds for divorce – “Being married to him was horrible, m’lud.  He filled the kitchen with bicycles and forced me to eat lemons.” – there are still many, many bloody lemons in the fridge.  At the current rate of consumption, they will probably last for about three months…

    …which is when the limoncello will be ready.  Will this lemon-hell never end?