Shaken Not Stirred.

[MANICHAEAN]

Shaken Not Stirred.
Which brings us with effortless ease to that jewel in the cocktail crown, the “Dry Martini.”
Forget 007 for the moment. It is irreverent as to whether this sublime creation is either shaken or stirred. The raison d’etre lies in not overdoing either; in the ultimate pursuit of getting the drink cold. It would lose its concentration otherwise.
I’d never had a dry martini until quite late in life; and was initiated by an ex-US marine that I worked with in Qatar. It was, he explained, a bit like taking holy orders; when. as a child in Chicago, he was given the awesome responsibility of knocking them up, (excuse the crudity of language) for his father and friends. The secret lay, he explained in what constitutes “dry.” In his case, it was just whispering the name “vermouth” over the top of the glass. In other words, pure liquor apart from a green olive & a touch of zest.
The result was that I subsequently acquired a tremendous respect for what was termed back in the States as the “three Martini lunch.”
On the silver screen the 1935 film “After Office Hours” comes to mind; with “Clark Gable” as “Jim Branch”, a newspaper editor with lessthan honourable intentions over “Constance Bennett” as “Sharon Norwood,” the socialite reporter for the same paper, as they try to solve a murder mystery.
In the verbal foreplay over drinks, she asks “Why did you lie to me?”
The response from a brooding Jim; “If you were looking at what I’m looking at, you’d know why I lied to you.”

[tailor STATELY]

Lol... good story. Never saw the movie, will have to try to find it. Never tried a Martini either in my drinking days (though I may have attempted one or two when I tended bar on brief occasions)... more a rum with whatever or wine or beer way back when. Enjoyed :)

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[tonywalt]

“Shaken Not Stirred” is a miniature gem, a piece that manages to be anecdotal, cinematic, and lightly elegiac all at once. What begins as a meditation on the Dry Martini quickly unfurls into something richer: a memory of initiation, a nod to American ritual, and a cultural detour through Hollywood’s golden age.

The prose has an effortless conversational glide, carrying the reader from Qatar to Chicago to a 1930s Clark Gable film without ever feeling forced. There’s a wit in the phrasing — “whispering the name vermouth over the top of the glass” — that captures the essential absurdity and elegance of cocktail culture in a single stroke. The aside about “holy orders” is equally telling, elevating the drink from mere indulgence to quasi-religion.

What lingers, though, is the tone: part reminiscence, part cultural essay, part sly confession. By the end, the Martini is less a drink than a symbol — of masculine ritual, of cinematic romance, of the ways small habits and tastes carry whole worlds of meaning.

It’s a brief story, yes, but a polished one.

[MANICHAEAN]

Thank you for the kind words. Take care.