You may remember our delicious Scottish-themed cocktail: Caledon , which we shared on Christmas Eve in 2024. This remains one of our most popular blog posts, so we thought we would share another one for you on this All Hallow's Eve! With that in mind, I am pleased to introduce you to: The Raighvan Park , inspired by Judith Crow's novella, The Folly at Raighvan Park, which you can find here . Here are your step by step instructions for creating this gothic beverage (have we just invented the gothtail ?!) It's deliciously dark, as you might expect, with a hint of the upper-class style of the novella. You will need: 1. Port 2. Patron Xo Cafe (you could use any other coffee liqueur) 3. Soda water with lime 4. Ginger ale 5. Pepsi Max 6. Liquorice Time to put them all together... 1. Pour one shot of coffee liqueur into a large wine glass. 2. Add one shot of port. Remember, a gothic gentleman loves his port! 3. Now onto the non-alcoholic additions... include two shots of soda wat...
This month being #HistFicMay has got me thinking about my closest-to-being-finished WIP, Poisoned Pilgrimage . As much as possible, I'm attempting to answer all the prompts based on this one and hoping that it might spur me on to actually write the last few chapters... Alas, so far, time has been a rare commodity this May! That being said, we did sit down this evening and watch the announcement of the newly elected Pope Leo XIV and listen (via the most appalling automatic translation software!) to his first address as pope. Whatever your religious beliefs, this was a moment for the history books. What happens during his tenure remains to be seen, but it was a deeply significant and spiritual moment to join people in every corner of the world and look forward in hope. While the commentary teams were discussing what the choice of Leo might represent, I was able to (with a small amount of smugness, I'm not going to lie!) impress Judith with my knowledge of the fact the Medici pop...