For christmas, to make a belaboured point, i bought my brother a very expensive bottle of 50 year old Glenfiddich (pronounced Glenfidick, according to the sap on tv. Just like a gaggis now a gage-ia? Never) scotch, he took it, opened it with and smiled with a glee i haven't seen since awakening as a five year old to find him squirting his jip in my eye. "beautiful, beautiful.." he crooned, oblivious to charade. Prick. i was at least hoping for a nip, but he took it, and me, to his cellar (he has a cellar) where he showed me his whisk(e)y, where in he has a collection of 40 year old malts, many, if not all, conspicuously more expensive than the one i had bough for him. He wasn't doing it deliberately, no, not showing off or belittling my present, the opposite, letting me into his world, showing me his collection, allowing me to savour the tang in the air, the neat lines of old bottles, some adorned with antler, others unbecoming, glistening urine coloured liquid with a tattly label haphazard across the front. A bottle of Maccalan, distilled in 1936. My mouth is instantly dry, my knees shake. He’s taking it out, and showing me. I can barely hear him. “…… in 1982 for a few hundred pounds, worth about 5 grand now….”

Lets drink it I croak, but it comes out as a hiss, and he’s not listening. “this is a good one Hector, a real good one.” Her says, admiring my bottle. “see, booze, it’s about so much more than waking up to find your friend has choked on his own vomit” he continues, less than obliquely referencing Martin Greeflund’s untimely death in my flat back in the early 90’s. I would point out, I wasn’t there at the time. I was banging his wife over at his flat, in a a pretense of trying to talk her into taking him back, and thus stemming the inflow of various intoxicants into his knackered body. Anyway. My brother slaps me on the shoulder, and is grinning, like I finally get it. “shit, man” I say, “you don’t get it, you should have seen my cellar, back in the day…”

“whiskeys?”

“wines, mostly.”

He grins at me. Who’d have thought we’d bond over the very thing he’s trying to deny me. I feel very ill. The smell of potatoes and turkey as we walk back up stairs…