#rook Pub cocktails

[brookpub]

Winter Cocktails and Pub Bites At Brook Pub

The colder months are perfect for splurging, and there's no better way to celebrate than with a well-thought-out bar menu. We've selected a variety of Winter Cocktails and Pub Bites at Brook Pub that are sure to lift your spirits. Try them with some of our carefully created bar snacks, and you'll have a match made in gastronomic heaven.

Raise Your Spirits: A Delicious Winter Cocktail Tour

Strawberry Daiquiri: 

Every sip is like a ray of sunshine.

Enjoy our refreshing Best Strawberry Daiquiri as a way to forget about the cold weather outside. This refreshing drink combines the fruity flavours of ripe strawberries with the tartness of fresh lime juice and the smoothness of white rum. When served cold, it's a pleasant reminder that summer's vivaciousness is just around the corner.

Espresso Martini: 

introducing Your Life with Spark and Class

The Espresso Martini is the ideal choice for individuals who need a classy pick-me-up. This cocktail is robust because it mixes the silky indulgence of vodka and coffee liqueur with the decadent richness of freshly made espresso. It's a caffeine-infused treat that will perk you up anytime.

Passion Fruit Martini: 

Unique Flavours, a Once-in-a-Lifetime Adventure

The Passion Fruit Martini will whisk you away to sandy beaches. A premium vodka and a little sugar are combined with the exotic tang of passion fruit to create this tropical jewel. It's an exotic getaway from the winter's chill, served in a chilled martini glass.

Margarita: 

Traditional Favour with a Spicy Kick

The classic Margarita cocktail should be on every bartender's list. Our take on the classic cocktail combines tequila, fresh lime juice, and orange liqueur with a dash of salt on the rim of a salt-rimmed glass. The zesty citrus flavours balance the smokiness of the tequila.

Mojito: 

The Perfect Minty Blissful Refreshment

Get your fill of the Mojito's refreshing flavours. This traditional Cuban cocktail is made by muddling together white rum, lime juice, and mint leaves. It's a revitalising and refreshing option when topped with soda water.

Amaretto Sour:

A Citrusy, Nuttiness of Pleasure

The Amaretto Sour is an excellent example of how well nuttiness and citrus coexist. This drink combines the sweet amaretto liqueur with the tart lemon juice for a deliciously balanced flavour. A soothing and stimulating beverage is the end product.

Hot Buttered Rum:

Traditional hot buttered rum is made with black rum, hot water, butter, and spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, and is a great way to warm up on cold winter days. It's perfect for a cold night before the fire because of its velvety smoothness and warming spices.

A Cranberry Mule:

This festive take on the Moscow Mule blends vodka, ginger beer, and cranberry juice for a delicious tart beverage. Its vibrant colour and tangy flavour make it a welcome addition to any holiday get-together.

"Irish Coffee":

Irish coffee is a classic drink with hot coffee, Irish whisky, sugar and whipped cream. The combination of caffeine and alcohol delivers a fantastic pick-me-up on chilly winter mornings or a calming nightcap.

Maple Bourbon Old Fashioned:

This updated take on an old favourite uses maple syrup to add a rich, caramelised sweetness. This cocktail is cosy and refined, thanks to the bourbon, bitters, and orange twist.

A Winter Sangria:

Winter Sangria is a delicious cocktail with red wine, brandy, and seasonal fruits, including oranges, pomegranates, and cranberries. The vivid colours and fragrant aromas will perk you up on the greyest of winter days.

Martini with Pears and Spices:

Pear vodka, pear liqueur, and some aromatic spices like cinnamon and cloves combine to make this sophisticated drink. It's perfect for a classy winter party with its fruity sweetness and subtle spiciness.

Pub snacks that go well with a drink:

Brie cheese baked with a cranberry sauce:

The tart cranberry sauce complements the melty brie cheese well. The creamy, acidic, and sweet flavours complement the Cranberry Mule nicely.

Mini Meatballs on a Stick:

Tender meatballs marinated in a flavorful sauce and skewered for dipping. If you're having a Maple Bourbon Old Fashioned, these tasty snacks are a must.

Bacon-Roasted Brussels Sprouts:

Bacon chunks and balsamic glaze are combined with Brussels sprouts to make a crispy side dish. Irish coffee is a perfect complement to this savoury dish.

Chicken Wings with Pomegranate Glaze:

Enjoy the sticky, sweet, slightly sour chicken wings wrapped in a delectable pomegranate glaze. The Winter Sangria is perfect with these wings.

Prosciutto with fig crostini:

Baguette slices slathered with honey and piled high with prosciutto, figs, and creamy goat cheese. A glass of the Spiced Pear Martini and these sophisticated appetisers are a match made in heaven.

Fried Sweet Potatoes with Chipotle Mayonnaise:

Sweet potato fries are fried to a golden crisp and accompanied by a smoky, spicy chipotle aioli. The Hot Buttered Rum complements the smokiness of the fries well.

Make this winter the best one yet by hosting a cocktail party complete with tasty bar snacks. These pairings can help you create a warm and memorable ambience, whether you're hosting a Christmas party or just relaxing at home. Embrace the season with these delicious combos and savour the warmth they bring. I hope you all have a fantastic winter!

Brook Pub Christmas celebrations:

We are happy to announce that we accept pre-bookings for Christmas parties if you plan to throw a party for your friends, family and colleagues this Christmas. Our merry, magical festive menu will be available from 25th November to 24th December, and you can enjoy two courses for 26 pounds and three for 30 pounds.

We have come up with a special Canape menu along with a Merry Magical Festive menu for the party. From the Festive Canape Menu, you can choose 6 - 18 pounds or 8 to 24 pounds course. Coming to the main event, Christmas, we created a special day menu for 2 courses for 39.99 pounds and 3-course meals for 44.99 pounds. The food will served from 12 to 4 pm, so make this day a special one by bringing in your family and friends. Come enjoy some of the best Winter Cocktails and Pub Bites At Brook Pub!!

[forasecondtherewedwon]

seven degrees east - chapter four

Fandom: Masters of the Air Pairings: multiple Rating: T (may change) Chapter: 4 / ? Word Count: 4645

read on tumblr: one | two | three

For most who were permitted entry, the Thorpe Abbotts grad pub was a useful spot to continue any promising discussions begun in class, bitch about grading undergraduate essays, and—thanks to the student discount offered by this campus establishment—get pre-trivia night tipsy on a higher quality of beer than they normally drank. The pub was called the Barracks because of the airfield that had stood on the spot decades before. Though the chairs were hard and the laminated page ambitiously headed “signature cocktails” likely hadn’t changed since the ’80s, the university’s graduate students considered it a nice place to hang out. The Barracks’ quirks made it all the homier. And nobody ordered the cocktails anyway.

It was larger than most of the pubs the boys would have packed themselves into on a Friday night, and continued to feel spacious even when a popular local band played the low stage situated at one end or the once-a-month karaoke event packed the place with unusual customers. (These were mostly fearless female students from departments that scared the boys shitless, like medical biophysics and actuarial science. Curt had once gleefully disappeared into the thick hedge ringing the pub’s patio with one such woman after discovering his shot-in-the-dark conversation topic of the possibility of animal cloning had legs.)

On an average, unspecial day, the Barracks had its particular draw for each of the boys. Gale liked it as a place to sit and nod, resting while others spoke. Rosie liked to do the speaking. For Bubbles, its pub fare was an oasis on Crosby’s nights to cook—for Crosby, it was the simple pleasure of an actual place where an actual bartender knew his name (after he summoned the nerve to inform the man that his name was Harry, not Henry). At the Barracks, Nash did what Nash did anywhere: trawled for a date to the movies. John—kinetic creature that he was—would throw darts with his eyes closed and dig out ancient board games whose missing pieces (“Yes, you can use that rook as a Battleship peg, Buck! Go! Your turn!”) were no impediment to his will to play anything and everything.

Curt loved the Barracks for another reason. Below the dusty TV usually tuned to show music videos, the news, or a match of whatever sport the academics got overly invested in that week as an excuse to put off writing an essay or studying for an exam, there was a PlayStation. Due to its locale, it had suffered some abuse, but it was reliable enough to get Curt through several levels of Air Combat. This left him feeling triumphant and allowed him to pat himself on the back for tearing his eyes away from the smaller screen of the Game Boy he had in his dorm.

“C’mon, Lieutenant,” he coached himself, leaning his whole body as he steered his fighter jet away from enemy fire. “Fly like an angel, don’t die like one.”

The pep talk didn’t work, and when his plane was destroyed, Curt sighed and set the controller on his knee in defeat. It slid off and clattered to the floor. He stared at it for several seconds before scooping it up and putting it back on the battered cabinet upon which the TV rested.

“Rough day to be a pilot,” he said, sagging into a different seat as he joined Jack Kidd at the bar.

“Yeah,” Kidd commiserated. Then, “Huh?”

“Aw, never mind. How’s the dissertation goin’?”

Predictably, Kidd groaned. Curt winced sympathetically.

“Next one’s on me, bud,” he promised, giving Kidd’s shoulder a quick squeeze.

“It’s actually going…” Kidd tried again as his face attempted a more hopeful expression. “…fine.”

“That good, huh?”

“I’m not behind. Well, I am, but not catastrophically. Well… You know what? You’ll see. Enjoy your innocence, Curt.”

Curt didn’t know exactly what to do with this troubling speech—or with being called innocent, which he wasn’t sure he’d ever been called. He decided he would give Kidd the gift of silent companionship. In between sips of his beer, he held the edge of the bar and twisted back and forth on his stool. This didn’t appear to bother Kidd, who seemed to be lost in his own mind for a while.

Eventually, he said, “I think I need a hobby.”

“A hobby,” Curt repeated. “Ok, that sounds like a good idea. Whaddya like?”

Very seriously, Kidd replied, “Reading.”

Curt kneaded his forehead and tried not to make the noise Kidd made when anyone brought up his dissertation.

“No. You gotta do something that’s nothing like the thing you’re working on,” he counselled with an emphatic slashing gesture. “Like, me? For instance? Last summer, I drove out to Rhode Island, right?”

“I don’t know, did you?”

Curt sighed.

“Guy, wait. I’m tellin’ you a story. I drove out to Rhode Island because I heard about this big skateboarding competition—the X Games. So, I’m watchin’ Tony Hawk, in person, doin’ all these flips and shit—”

“Yeah?”

“—and I’m like…” Curt spread his hands, a grin splitting his face. “…I could fuckin’ do that.”

Kidd’s expression went flat.

“Right. And now you’ve given up academia to pursue your dream of being a professional skateboarder,” he said sarcastically. “Mega inspirational. Thanks, Biddick.”

Curt leaned his elbows on the bar and shrugged.

“Well, no. But I bought a board, and I’m tryin’ to learn. Gets me outta my head, you know?”

“Hey, you know another way you can get what’s in your head out? Skateboarding accident. I hope you wear a helmet.”

“Hot tip. Thanks, Dad. I’m just tryin’ to help you overcome that fuckin’ fight-or-flight response you get whenever somebody says the D-word.”

“Dad?”

“Dissertation.”

Kidd’s nose scrunched in aversion. Curt was surprised he didn’t shrink back more dramatically, a vampire confronted with a cross, but maybe the fact that he’d already said the word once had desensitized Kidd a little.

“I guess I feel a bit better,” Kidd said. “Being annoyed at you is kinda cleansing.”

Curt raised his glass to toast that sentiment.

“You’re welcome.” He had a swallow. “You comin’ to trivia later? New hobby?”

“My being smarter than you isn’t a hobby, just a fact. But, yeah; I’ll come.”

“Awesome. We’ve been lookin’ for a new teammate who’s an expert on havin’ a stick up their ass.”

Kidd glared at Curt, but the remark provided him with the impetus he needed to hop off his stool and storm out of the Barracks, curtailing his afternoon of procrastination. Curt chuckled into his glass until he realized he’d been left to pay the bill.

—

Trivia night at the Barracks was a joyful confusion of noise that only clarified on the chorus of “Sweet Caroline,” the handful of patrons close enough to a speaker conducting the room with air-punches timed to each “BUP BUP BUH!” Though less busy than it was in fall and winter, the bar was still close to bursting. Windows and doors had been propped open to allow the sound to spill out into the warm summer evening. Free chairs were scarce, so all around the bar, friends crammed into booths and sat on each other’s laps.

The atmosphere was both competitive and full of low expectations; there were never enough questions in the category someone knew a lot about to enable them to perform well overall. This meant any feelings of despondency were, at least, short-lived. By nature of their discipline, the literature boys had a small chip on their collective scholastic shoulder. They were mainly let down by always going into trivia night expecting to do better than they inevitably did, trusting the novels they’d read to provide a sufficient foundation on topics like religion and politics and geology. Sometimes they lucked out, and sometimes they absorbed a stray grad student from another discipline into their team. Often, they cursed the very authors they had venerated only hours before. And they cursed Bubbles, who would give away literature answers to anyone who asked. (“That’s the one thing we know!” Crosby lamented, head in hands.)

Mostly, the night was about pooling information the way they would pool change for a cab, picking through the pocket lint and the gum wrappers to find the coins. Gale knew all the parts of a radio. Rosie could confidently name five Janet Jackson hits. Nash surprised the entire table with his knowledge of African rivers, inspiring John to take spontaneous hold of his head with both hands and plant a benedictory kiss on his forehead, not seeing the shockwave of hurt that momentarily dislodged Gale’s careful public mask. When Curt slung an arm around the back of Gale’s neck the next time they were all bent over their answer paper, Gale found it was easy to settle into the contact. He laughed when Curt told him he smelled good.

When they had lost, and they were trashed, and it was not yet 10pm, they considered how they might extend their evening. They had handed in their short essays for Professor Harding’s class that morning, which increased their sense that they should be celebrating; another paper down, only the final essay to go, and then the summer class was over and they would have some time to dick around before fall semester began. Everything seemed good and big and possible as they tumbled from the Barracks’ interior onto the patio.

It began as a whisper, and then they were all looking at and teasing Rosie as he blushed about the girl he’d met at the video store.

“You should call her,” Nash suggested, grinning. “You got her number, right?”

Rosie nodded.

“Well, go back to your room and get it!” Bubbles urged. “We’ll wait right here!”

There was a short bank of payphones against the brick wall, just beyond the bounds of the patio, and Rosie glanced at them before looking again to Bubbles.

“Call from here? You wanna hear me crash and burn?”

“Not at all, Rosie,” Gale assured him, eyes sparkling with playfulness and intoxication. “We wanna learn how it’s done.”

As they cheered him on, Crosby shoved Rosie gently in the direction of their dorms, but Rosie rolled out of the push. He held up his hands, smirking.

“I don’t need to go get her number.” He tapped his temple. “Right here, boys.”

“You memorized it?” Curt interpreted with a laugh.

“That is adorable,” John pronounced. He trailed Rosie to a payphone—they all did—and massaged his shoulders like a prize fighter’s while Rosie dug change from his pocket. When Rosie shook him off, smiling, John stepped back and crossed his arms as he joined the semi-circle the boys had made around the payphones.

Rosie dropped the coins through the slot, then took a deep breath and lifted the plastic receiver to his ear. He turned to the boys.

“It’s ringing,” he hissed.

And they all saw the moment she answered: Rosie’s hand clutched tighter around the receiver, his eyebrows shot up, and his gaze darted up towards the lately-appeared stars in relief, then down to the patio stones between his shoes as he focused in on her voice.

“Hi, Liss. It’s Robert Rosenthal calling.” He swatted his hand at Curt, who was pretending to look impressed as he mouthed “Robert” at Gale. They couldn’t remember him ever going by his first name; he was always Rosie to them. “From— You do? Ok, good.”

They took the side of the conversation they were hearing to mean that this was the girl from the store, that she hadn’t given Rosie a fake number, and that she’d known who he was right away. A very good sign. The boys monkey-barred between Rosie’s “uh huh” and “mhmm”s, his noises of agreement as he listened to Liss, and they watched him smile and smile into the receiver’s mouthpiece. Eventually, Rosie and Liss had talked so long that he had to feed more change into the payphone. They peeled off to sit at a nearby table. Gale watched Rosie, and he watched John—shoulder-to-shoulder with Nash. When Curt rose to go back inside and find a bathroom, Gale went too.

“Well, yeah,” Rosie was saying to Liss, running a fingernail down the metal ridges of the payphone cord. “I was hoping you’d call too. I mean, that I’d call you. You gave me your number.”

On the other end of the line, Liss laughed.

“I did,” she said. “Are you a little bit drunk right now, Robert?”

Rosie felt the flush in his cheeks deepen.

“A little. You don’t have to call me ‘Robert.’”

“That’s what you told me your name was,” Liss reminded him, amused. “What do you go by? Rob? Robbie? Please don’t say Bert. I probably could learn to separate that name from Sesame Street, but I don’t want to.”

“Most people call me ‘Rosie.’ I introduced myself as Robert because I… you…” he stammered, then laughed at himself. Because the second we locked eyes, I didn’t know if I was coming or going, he was trying to say.

“I get it.”

“Yeah?” he breathed, relieved.

“Yeah.”

Her straightforwardness terrified and reassured him—and not much could do either. It didn’t make his heart beat any slower though. That Poesque organ was pounding in his chest, making itself known. He felt like he’d been seen when he hadn’t even realized he’d made himself visible. In this way, it seemed to Rosie that love was a terrifying game of laser tag. He hadn’t used the word “love” out loud—not to the boys, certainly not over the phone to Liss—but Rosie was possessed of a quiet certainty that love was happening to him, completely unexpected.

“It was trivia night here,” he told Liss, when someone used the rear exit of the Barracks and a swell of sound escaped as the door was pushed wider. “You should come sometime.”

“That sounds like fun,” she said.

He wished she were there already. Had he not been drunk, he knew he would’ve been driving to meet up with her. He recalled Curt’s early attempts on his skateboard, how Curt had said that what you had to do before anything else was find your center of gravity so you could keep your balance. Rosie believed that was what he was experiencing: he’d found his center of gravity. It felt to him as though he was suddenly aligned with a force of considerable magnitude. A powerful feeling—and yet he grinned into the phone like a kid.

Meanwhile, the boys had decided it was worth getting another round, since Rosie was taking an unexpectedly long time on the phone. Bubbles offered to go back into the bar. John accompanied him. They wove between tables and joined the end of the line. Bubbles didn’t seem to mind waiting, but after John had stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and tapped his foot for about thirty seconds, scanning the busy bar, he felt too antsy to keep standing there.

“I’m gonna go look for Curt and Buck,” he informed Bubbles, raising his voice to be heard though they were beside each other. “That alright?”

“Ok! You know where I’ll be!”

John nodded and twitched his mouth in something that wasn’t quite a smile. He slipped away through the Barracks’ front doors. This didn’t put him outside. The Barracks, though a pub, was a university establishment, connected to campus via more than its patrons; it was located in the back of the Philosophy building. The front door exit dumped John into a distinctly institutional corridor, from the sickly pastel paint on the walls to the rectangular lights littered with the shadows of trapped flies overhead. He strolled down the hall, letting the sound of the bar lessen and blur. The bathrooms were way at the end, past the water fountains.

He didn’t see Curt and Gale standing by the bathrooms, and he hadn’t really expected to. There was nothing to do in this hallway. John’s plan was to walk to the end then turn and continue on to the entrance hall. He figured the boys were probably outside, smoking on the front steps. Maybe getting a little high. That would have explained why they’d taken so long to come back to the group. They’d probably lost track of time.

John was smiling as he pictured this, coming upon the two of them with their brows furrowed, spliffs pinched between the fingers they pointed emphatically at one another as they said the dumbest shit they’d ever said in their lives. Yeah, he’d take a hit too, then wrangle them, shoo ’em back to the patio. Casting his eyes into classrooms each time he passed a door with a window, John idly decided he would walk the boys around the outside of the building instead of backtracking. This hallway, he thought, killed the lively atmosphere of the Barracks. It was just too—

He stopped like someone had stopped him. Physically. He forgot how to walk or blink or breathe. It wasn’t until his jaw clenched that John remembered he had a body at all—it had all gone numb.

The ache of his teeth startled him back into himself. Reanimating, he hurried down the hall. He didn’t know if the bathroom was empty, only that the closest stall was. He slammed the door wide. It hit the wall with a bang, and, like a pair of dice, John threw himself to his knees on the cold tile floor. He hadn’t had that much to drink, but he braced his forearms on the toilet seat and retched into the bowl until he shook, until snot ran from his nose and tears from his eyes. When it was over—taking the immeasurable as-long-as-it-takes that time was unfairly doled out in when one was in the throes of being painfully ill in the liminal space of a (probably) empty men’s room at the end of a quiet hallway in a darkened Philosophy building on an interminable June night—John felt as hollow and contorted as a bendy straw. He wiped roughly at his mouth with the back of his hand before collapsing against the wall.

Finally, he reached up to shut the stall door, fumbling limply with the lock. It was too late and not the kind of protection he needed, but he wanted the illusion.

—

As in many places, the thing to do for fun in Casper, Wyoming as Gale had grown up had been to ride bikes all day long. The summers had been wide, Casper Mountain crumpled like a bedsheet on the southern horizon. Gale’s routine had involved picking up his bike from where he’d dumped it at the side door on his way in to dinner the previous evening and roaming in lazy loops—not the kind of reliable routes the mailman did, but Gale would’ve inevitably run into a friend who’d been doing the same thing. When there had been a few of them, they’d ridden towards the train station. His friends had always liked crisscrossing the tracks on the way, ducking under the lowering gate and laughing at the flashing red warning lights. Gale had done this too, his face marked with a cold determination the other kids didn’t really understand, the rest of them whooping and bumping their wheels across the tracks.

In the parking lot, they had chattered and loitered, leaning their bikes against the train station. Gale had stayed astride his, paying little attention to the others. With his shoes planted on the asphalt and his chin atop the arms he’d folded over his handlebars, he’d watched people arrive from Laramie and Denver and Salt Lake City. But before that, before the cars had disgorged their passengers, there had been the sound of the train pulling into the station. The screech. The low huffs, so alluring to Gale that that had been the sound to call him towards the tracks, rather than the jangling alarm at a crossing. He hadn’t given in—he’d known better—but he’d closed his eyes to better hear it breathe.

The huffs of Curt’s breathing took Gale back, but this time, the warm push of air was right there on his cheek. Their mouths moved together. Except for the breathing, Gale didn’t think Curt had ever been so quiet for so long.

It had been a lot of little things that week. Or not so little, only seeming small because it was as if Gale had viewed them through a telescope. Breaking up with Marge was one. Because she was so far away, that hadn’t made a big change to his life, but it felt like a long-attached tether was suddenly gone and he’d discovered a fuller range of motion. He hoped she would too. On top of that had been the in-class discussion of the woodchopper, and Curt’s mystery hickey last weekend, and Curt’s unembarrassed insistence that Gale read Giovanni’s Room, and Curt still by Gale’s side when John’s lips met Nash’s forehead. Gale didn’t want to date Curt, but he wanted to take a page from his metaphorical book and make out with somebody outside a bar without thinking too hard about it. In some half-examined corner of his self, he’d needed it, and Curt had been amenable, and then there they’d been.

Gale had been private with Marge too, so it hadn’t felt so different—after Gale had found himself looking at Curt with half-lidded eyes, Curt with his heated stare on Gale’s mouth—to step into a vacant classroom and close the door. That much was the same. And it was a surprise to Gale that kissing a man didn’t feel like Kissing a Man; it just felt like he was kissing Curt, as he had once kissed Marge. There was a zing of giddy lust without any deeper sense of romantic devotion, but Gale didn’t think that had anything to do with Curt not being a woman. They were friends—a little drunk, a little horny—who happened to be comfortable with each other. Which made it so easy for Gale to fist Curt’s t-shirt at the base of his neck as his pulse thundered through him like a departing train, and for Curt to go along with it.

Curt smiled at the parts of Gale now being revealed. This knowledge wouldn’t go anywhere, wouldn’t mean anything, and so it was fine to enjoy Gale’s uncompromising aggression. He had taken control so quickly and so thoroughly that it could almost have been his idea. Except Curt knew better. He knew every small opening he’d given Gale, a million ways to come close if he wanted that, never really believing that he did until their eyes had met in the bathroom mirror and Curt had watched Gale’s cheeks bloom a dark, velvety pink.

I thought there was Bucky, Curt thought, but Gale wasn’t hesitating, kissing him roughly over and over, so Curt didn’t ask.

In a while, they went outside and found the boys where they had left them. Only John was absent. Curt slid into one of the benches and Gale sat on the edge of the table. It didn’t seem like anybody’d missed them; there were drinks on the table and some idiot had brought up the essays they’d submitted to Professor Harding, so everyone was talking about what they’d written, liberally badmouthing Thoreau as the font of all their grief. Gale didn’t want to think about schoolwork, but he didn’t want to attract everyone’s notice by demanding a new topic, so he sat quietly.

When John appeared, Gale straightened as though called to attention. John didn’t look well, somehow.

“What the hell, man?” Bubbles said to him, more confused than angry. “You never came back! I had to wave my arms until Croz saw me through the window and came to help me carry drinks!”

John just muttered, “Sorry,” and stood apart from their table.

“Everything ok?” Rosie asked.

John could tell he didn’t want to, that he was still enjoying the high of his phone call to Liss, and that John was bringing down the mood. But he couldn’t help it. He let his mouth stretch into an insincere, close-lipped smile and let out a quick, “Yep.”

Rosie watched him uneasily. The entire tableau had frozen: the perfect picture of a group of friends on a night at the bar. John stared at Rosie until he nodded slightly, understanding that something was definitely not ok, but that they weren’t going to talk about it. Talking about it was not a strong suit for either of them.

“We’re invited to a party,” Rosie said, now that everyone was there.

The news thawed the boys just enough; Rosie answered their questions. Next weekend. Yes, Nash, Helen would be there. Yes, she and Liss were roommates. Yes, all the boys were invited, but nobody had better make Rosie look bad or he would give them shit like they had never been given shit before. He was already looking forward to it, seeing the inside of a place that wasn’t just one of their regular haunts, though he intended no offence to the familiar. Rosie liked having something to come back to, but he liked having someplace to go.

They left the Barracks that night still talking about it, the dark sky twinkling far above Nash and Rosie’s excitement, and Crosby’s guilty yearning, and Curt’s contented libido. In the dorms, he tapped Gale’s elbow with his own before bounding down the hall towards his room. It wasn’t an invitation, just a farewell; he didn’t expect Gale to go from never having kissed a guy (he hadn’t said, but Curt assumed) to the whole enchilada in one night. There was no pressure. Curt didn’t think either of them wanted to turn a few minutes of messing around into anything more than that.

And Gale was aware that he should’ve felt relieved by how Curt left it, but he didn’t. He trailed John into their suite, full of unspoken dread.

“John,” he finally said, when the door was shut.

“What?”

But John was moving towards his bedroom, not even looking in Gale’s direction. Gale knew, he knew already, but it wasn’t enough. For some reason, he had to feel this too: what he knew he would feel when he looked John in the eye.

But John was a baby, and he wouldn’t allow it.

Gale sat tensely on the couch, waiting in case John emerged from his bedroom. He turned on the TV, tried to read. He chewed his lip until he couldn’t stand it and whipped The Portrait of a Lady across the room, angry at himself, angry at the soft crush of pages hitting the opposite wall. God fucking dammit, John! he wanted to yell. Gale was furious because it wasn’t right that he had done this thing—this rare, uninhibited thing, the huff, huff of Curt’s panted breath—that he told himself wasn’t about John at all and now John was punishing him by refusing eye contact. He wanted to make John look at him.

Gale had never intended for him, for anyone, to see. Part of what frustrated him was his own discomfort. He was trying not to let that sour what he and Curt had done. John wouldn’t care, Gale was certain, that he’d spied Gale kissing a man; he’d never known John to exhibit that kind of prejudice. But something was eating John, and if John had seen—and Gale harboured no doubts—then Gale wanted to read it in his eyes.

They read books, mostly. They found meaning. Gale wasn’t sure he could decide what this had meant for him until he learned from John’s eyes what it meant for them.

He waited another fifteen minutes, then he went to bed.

[killianmesmalls]

Smoke and Mirrors

On top of really digging (obsessing about?) Hook and Alice, I’m really appreciating the dynamic between Hook and Regina. I’ve always appreciated their antagonistic alliance, but their budding friendship recently has been amazing. So, KnightRook and friendship HookedQueen below. Likely later canon non-compliant, but for now it’s how I’m imagining a scene going down.

Chapter: 1/1

Warnings: ANGST. Sad and somewhat manic Alice. 

Synopsis: It was a weekly match at Roni’s like anything else. Until Alice starts to wake up...

The match was heated, to say the least. His knight was closing in, she had lost both of her bishops, and the middle of the board was beginning to look like her own personal Waterloo.

Tilly couldn’t be happier. True to his word, the detective had been on time each week for their scheduled game. Each time included food, which he of course paid for, and a friendly exchange that kept her from floating too deep into her thoughts. In spite of his serious exterior, she was really getting to like this Detective Rogers.

Does he even have a first name, she thought suddenly, or did he pop out and his parents decided to call him ‘Detective’, and he decided ‘Welp, guess I know what I’m doing now’?

Perhaps if she had been more focused, she would have noticed a misplayed move, but her eyes were studying the wrinkles of concentration stamped into his forehead. He reminded her of someone. She couldn’t quite put her finger on whom. Perhaps someone from long ago in the system, a foster father that wasn’t as spectacularly awful as the rest. Maybe it was just someone from a television show she had caught once and her faded memories made her feel like she knew this sitcom-perfect person from a lost time. Maybe someone from a storybook she couldn’t for the life of her remember the name of. All sorts of stories were getting mixed in her head these days.

Roni’s bar was quiet for the afternoon. The usual Thursday lunch crowd had largely cleared out and Rogers had the rest of the day off. Tilly had to admit, he was a little more fun now that he wasn’t obsessing about that Eloise Gardener. The ache of the lie she had been instructed to tell him, that Weaver had insisted was for the best, had mostly died away. Though, the sting of betrayal from the older detective still reared its ugly head in times of silence. Rogers’s presence always helped.

“Orders up,” Roni said, carrying their respective sandwiches and fries to the table.

Rogers looked up to give a grateful smile, the tension in his forehead releasing just slightly. “Thanks.”

“So, who’s winning?”

“He is, but I can get him back where I want him,” answered Tilly, wiggling her eyebrows.

“It’s going to be difficult if you keep putting your queen in harm’s way,” Rogers offered sagely.

“Distraction, Detective. Smoke and mirrors. All it is, is smoke and mirrors. I’ll have you back where I want you in no time.”

Rogers just chuckled and moved his knight, capturing her queen’s last line of defense—her rook. “Distraction or not, that’s a check.”

She made a face at the loss, reaching into her bag to feel for her pills. Stupid things. They were the only things that made mealtimes less than perfect—a reminder that she could get upside-down again. A reminder she was a danger without some lab-created chemical coursing through her. Sighing at the thought, she continued to search with her hand, furrowing her eyebrows when it came up empty.

“Tilly?” Rogers asked, both he and Roni watching with mild concern. “Is everything alright?”

Without a word, she dumped the contents of her bag on the free booth space beside her, fumbling through her knick-knacks wildly. “No, no, no, no…”

“Tilly?” Roni repeated, her heart breaking for the girl she now knew she was. “What’s wrong?”

“My pills. I can’t find—Not here. They’re not here. I had them and now…” Tilly shot up from the booth and hunted around them, her heart pounding in her ears.

“It’s going to be fine,” Rogers insisted as he rose with a more careful urgency. “We’ll find them. And, even if we don’t, we can figure out a way to get you a refill as quickly as possible.”

Tilly continued searching, the fog rolling in—or was it out? She couldn’t quite tell. No, she must keep hunting. Hunting like a… what was it? Bandersnatch? No, that was nonsense.

Roni, no, Regina began to get a sense of what was happening. She could see in Tilly’s features a rising recognition mixing with the waves of confusion. She had felt it, too, when Drizella laced her drink with whatever the hell potion she had managed to get her slimy little manicured hands on.

“Rogers, can you check out front and around the block? See if they might have fallen out between the troll and here?” she asked.

“Sure,” he dutifully replied, already moving toward the door.

Only once the tell-tale bell over her door rang and the coast was clear did Regina approach the wild girl, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. Immediately, Tilly tried to pull away, but Regina was steadfast, albeit tender, in her approach.

“Do you know who you are?” she asked.

“What? Such a silly question. Everyone around here always has such silly questions,” the girl mumbled frantically.

“Do you know who you are?” Regina tried again. This time, their eyes met, Regina’s brown to the welling blue before her, and her feelings were confirmed.

“Alice. I’m Alice.”

She had expected Regina to call her crazy, to immediately call the hospital and have her committed. Instead, she saw as Regina moved to close a little more space between them.

“And, do you know who I am?”

Her tone was steady, almost maternal, and Alice let a few frightened tears fall before she replied, “Regina. You’re Regina Mills.”

When she saw a sad smile stretch across Regina’s strong but beautiful face, Alice felt a soft calm begin to wash over her. Then, in an instant, a surge of panic a thousand times stronger began to overwhelm her. What was happening? Where was…. Where…

“Papa!” she exclaimed, her hunt now turning her attention back to the booth they shared, her memories of Tilly and Alice mixing together like some sick, absinthe-riddled cocktail. She wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or ill. Her papa! He was here. But he—

Alice turned back to Regina, clenching her jaw in a way that reminded the former Evil Queen far too much of Hook when emotions began to get the better of him. “He’s not awake, is he?” It took everything Regina had to shake her head, her heart shattering as she watched the young woman in front of her begin to sag.

Though she was on the other end of this wretched curse, she knew how Alice felt. How absolutely gutting it was to remember someone you loved but they couldn’t remember you. She had struggled for weeks to face Henry and Jacinda, to see their eyes almost look through her sometimes. Here, poor Alice, after years of being separated from her own version of Killian Jones, had to grapple with being torn from him in a different, almost crueler way.

Before she knew it, Regina moved to envelope Alice into a tight embrace. For a moment, Alice struggled, the wild animal in her mind still fading away, but soon she gave in and rested her head on Regina’s shoulder. Heavy tears fell followed by agonizing, gasping sobs.

“Everyone always takes him away from me,” she wept. Regina steadied her with her left arm, her right hand rubbing up and down her spine in a motion she had learned in her years of motherhood soothing away nightmares and illness.

Regina watched the window for signs of anyone, especially Rogers, approaching. The last thing anyone needed was him barging back in to see his forgotten daughter having a breakdown. She also wasn’t sure what the girl would do. Likely run, she thought. Anything after didn’t bear thinking about.

Never before had the bar matron been happier that her establishment remained empty for so long. As she continued to comfort Alice, she was relieved to feel her tears ebbing and sobs turning to hitched breaths.

“I know this is difficult, Alice. I can’t imagine how much for you, but I have some idea. I need you to take some deep breaths, calm down, and we can talk about this.”

She half anticipated her to fight. If she had learned anything about her (sometimes reluctant) friend’s child, it was her firecracker-like personality. No surprises there considering her parents. Parent, her inner voice chided. There was no need to dignify that witch with the title, and Killian had earned it twice over.  

To her credit, Alice pulled herself together quickly, squaring her jaw in that pirate determination once all hints of tears had been brushed away. “Sorry. I’m okay now.”

“No you’re not, and that’s fine. It’s understandable. I know this looks bad now, but maybe this is a good thing. Maybe we can help each other out. Help figure out a way to break the curse together without anyone getting hurt.”

Alice’s brows knitted, then the memories of the curse’s origins were brought back into a faded view. The poisoned hearts. Here, in a world without magic, the original curses didn’t affect them. She thought back to the hospital when Weaver was discharged and Rogers had reached for her arm to stop her. Nothing had happened. No pain, no screams, nothing.

At long last, she nodded, bringing her sights back up to Regina’s warm, maternal gaze. “I’m sorry about Henry. About everyone.”

“It’s alright,” replied Regina.

Alice shook her head, repeating back, “No it’s not, and that’s fine.”

Regina couldn’t help the light chuckle that escaped her lips. Leave it to Hook’s daughter to throw her words back at her. “You’re right. But, maybe with each other’s help, we will be.”

She looked back to the window just in time to see a frustrated Rogers muttering to himself, heading toward the door. The speed of his pace told her exactly what she had hoped for.

“No luck,” he said the instant he stepped back into the pub. “I can call—”

“No need,” Regina said, putting her Roni voice back on and letting go of Alice. “We called the doctor on my cell. They’re putting an order in and Tilly can pick it up within the hour. They said another hour isn’t going to do any harm.”

Rogers eyed her suspiciously, then noted the more serene, almost happy look on the younger woman’s face. “Alright. Well, Tilly, did you want to continue or do you want to call it a day?”

“No,” she rushed to reply, then let out a forced laugh. “I’m fine. I promise. I can get back to beating you.”

This time Rogers did relax, setting his back against the booth and gesturing for her to join him. “I believe I was the one winning.”

“Smoke and mirrors, detective. Don’t worry. I’ll get you back.”

[table-talker-blog]

Drinking and Not Eating in Adelaide: The Crisis of the Outshone City

I’m a hospitality guy. I am in love with my job and my industry. Being able to have fun while I work and share my passion for great booze with strangers is what I live for. Working at Biggies at Bertram has been the great experience of my life so far. I’ve met new and interesting people, some who I now call some of my dearest friends, all from working behind the bar. And after spending this past year travelling the country, enjoying amazing food and booze, partying with fresh faces, I can’t help but notice this gaping hole in Adelaide’s dining/nightlife culture.

First off the bat: this is not a skewering of Adelaide; I adore this town. Is there fantastic places to go eat and drink? Absolutely, some of the finest bars and restaurants in the country are on our doorstep (and of course it doesn’t hurt that if you call yourself an “Adelaidian”, you’re about 20 minutes from some of the best wine and produce in the world). Hains & Co., Pink Moon Saloon, The Wheatsheaf and NOLA are some of the great watering holes in Australia. Without a doubt eating at Africola on my father’s birthday was the best dining experience i’ve had in recent memory. There are plenty of great little pubs around town to sit back and sink pint after pint of Coopers Pale. Billy Bob’s BBQ jam at The Grace Emily is the best thing you can do on a Monday night, one of the best things you can do all week even. Wednesday night beers at the beloved Crown & Anchor (long live the Cranka) is a time honoured tradition. I’ve had too many (a.k.a not enough) knock-offs turned club nights at The Exeter Hotel. And my own haunt Biggies is the best place in town you can have a pretentious free boogie whilst enjoying some of South Australia’s best beer and wine. There is certainly no lack in the quality of our bar and restaurant scene. Quantity is another thing entirely.

It’s amazing in Melbourne and Sydney how easy it is to find a phenomenal place to drink or eat without even trying. You can walk down a street in St. Kilda on a Monday night and drink have cocktails until 1am, on a public holiday even! After a recent trip to Melbourne with some friends, walking down Chapel St. on the New Years Day public holiday, we were able to enjoy some amazing craft beer at The Local Taphouse, and then stumbled on Holy Grail, a fantastic little cocktail haunt, and were able to drink until it struck 1am and had to close up shop (shout outs to the bartender who let us close up with him and hang around to 3:30am though). In Adelaide, the streets would be completely empty, and for us hospo folk, the venues that stay open (pokies rooms and casino’s excluded) are look upon like Gods. Even food! Whilst at Holy Grail, we asked where we could get some food at that hour, and the barman just pointed out the door to a great pizza spot. The same thing happened 2 nights later at The Rook’s Return, great pizza just across the road (okay, we like pizza when we’re drinking, sue us). In Adelaide, it’s a scavenger hunt to find great pizza. You know your nearest pizza spot sucks. We’ve got very few and far between great local watering holes if you live outside the CBD, only pubs and pokies rooms with all your favourite lagers on tap. Again, nothing wrong with a pub and a pokies room, i’ll sit and drink beers in a pokies room bar till the day I die, but you can’t deny Melbourne has got us beat in the outer suburbs. Not a TKO, a full first round knock-out loss. As far as our restaurants go, Sydney wipes the floor with us just the same. To every really great restaurant in Adelaide, there is probably 10 of the same caliber in Sydney. From the upper echelon of places like Quay and Sepia, to the fringe, casual but experimental joints like ACME and 10 William St, there is just an enormous bag of brilliant places to go eat. You look at the most recent Top 100 Australian Restaurants list, it is littered with Victorian and New South Wales restaurants, South Australia’s first placing is at 47 (Africola) with only 5 in total (Orana 48, Peel St. 95, Hentley Farm 96, and Fino 98 rounding us off). And it’s not like Adelaide’s population is too small, it’s about 1.2 million at the moment, and I can’t stress this enough, our produce is incredible! It’s all in our basket, but more often than not, we don’t take the opportunity.

What I really think it stems down to, is that for the most part, the general population are extremely unwilling to go out and spend their money on a great meal, they’d rather stash their pennies and travel. And again, there is nothing wrong with that at all, it’s a fantastic thing to do with your hard earned cash, I do the same thing myself. But when we go and travel, we go out and we eat fantastic food, we drink amazing beer, wine and spirits, and we come home and tell everybody how amazing the food is in such and such is, we document it all on Instagram, and we miss out on the brilliant things going on just around the corner. In contrast, in Melbourne I like to ask the local single 20-somethings how often they go out for a drink or some food. The general response is about 3-4 times a week. For us Adelaide folk, it’s generally once, twice on a good week, only on weekends. There is very little of a midweek night out if you work the traditional 9-5 hours, the city generally teems with hospo folk. Maybe the binge drinking culture is a bit more prevalent in Adelaide. There has always been the culture of rocking up to a venue and asking “what’s the cheapest drink?” so you can smash back as many as you can. There’s a time and a place for that, and for us Adelaide heads, that means Saturday, when we don’t have to go to work the next day. Having a few glasses of wine with an amazing meal is an underrated experience in this town. Adelaidians are very unwilling to part with their cash if they’re not drunk by the end of it.

What I think contributes to this is the lack of understanding of why it costs to go out, and an under appreciation of hospitality workers. When you ask why it costs $20 for your breakfast and a coffee, you’re forgetting about the cook who made it, and the barista who enables your caffeine addiction. The food and drink in front of you is the cheapest part of the transaction, everything else costs far more than some smashed avocado and eggs on toast, you’re paying for someone to make it for you, and better. What i’ve noticed more in Melbourne and Sydney, is a higher amount of respect and admiration for a hospitality professional. There is an understanding that they are good at what they do and make a mighty fine cocktail. They know they put up with a lot of slack. They know without them, they would have a far less vibrant and fun city. They know they are the people that make their lives better. Of course there are people in Adelaide that understand this plight, but the next time you complain it being $9 for a pint of beer, you can go to the bottle shop down the road, buy a carton cheaper, go home, hang out with the same group of friends you’ve known since high school, get pissed, make yourself steak and veg for dinner and complain about being bored, then you might understand what you’re paying for.

I’m now at the age where a large portion of my friends are now moving to Melbourne, and i’d be lying if i haven’t had the same fantasy. Every time I visit I say I will move. But then I get back home and I see the potential of this city, and all I want to do is be a part of the collective of people who could make this city into a new tourist destination. But every year, I see more and more cool and interesting people with fresh ideas and a brilliant work ethic move to Melbourne. There’s far more opportunities available and there is more money for them, it’s a no brainer. This town has this old white liberal air about it. The State government will quickly spend tax payer money on infrastructure preparing for population development, rather than create ways to increase tourism and coerce people to make the move to South Australia. And look, i get that, infrastructure is an important aspect of how cities progress and makes day to day living more comfortable and easy (side note: Melbourne is again far superior in this aspect. But we’ve got Sydney covered no worries). But comfortable and easy is not on the radar of an under 30 year old, career opportunities and things to do are their priorities, and that demographic, the young people with bright minds are how Adelaide as a city is going to move forward, rather than making the people who are moving towards retirement more comfortable. It’s why people make fun of this city, using phrases like “Great place to raise your kids” and follow it up with “I went to Adelaide once. It was closed”. But then I look at Duncan Welgemoed. He’s a chef from South Africa who has worked at The Fat Duck under Heston Blumenthal and at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. But he’s made Adelaide his home, winning Chef of the Year at Bistro Dom in 2013, and opening the oft mentioned in this piece Africola. He’s been one of these people who has made this town more vibrant and exciting, but he also moved here with his wife to start a family. But he opened an amazing restaurant, using the phenomenal produce that is around us, and has been reaping the rewards ever since. Unfortunately the youth of this town aren’t doing the same kind of thing.

In saying all this, I have to concede that we are getting better. I remember the days when Peel Street was a dank alleyway of our infamous nightclub strip Hindley Street. Now it is occupied by brilliant bars like Clever Little Tailor and Maybe Mae, and fantastic restaurants like Gondola Gondola and Peel St. It’s teeming with the kind of people that need to stick around. And I can’t stress this point enough: Mad March in Adelaide, with the Fringe and the Adelaide Festival going on, during that time of year, Adelaide is the greatest city in this country hands down. But around the country, there are cities that can keep that kind of vibrance pumping all year round. Being a part of Biggies of Bertram, I feel like one of those people who have added something to the city, and I think there are better days for Adelaide yet. There is a wealth of under utilised opportunities. But i’m holding on to the hope that this will happen before all my friends and people I admire ex-communicate to Melbourne. So for those of you playing at home in Adelaide: go out and eat, it’s only money. Drink less and drink better. Respect your hospitality workers, it’s not advisable to piss off the people making your coffee/food/drink. Make this city as fun as it could be. Give back and send forth positivity.

But at least we can get a beer at 2am. Sorry Sydney.

[jonnahickson562-blog]

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