Whisky Galore....

...Bro. Geo. signs in to report a curious moment's fantasy today. There he was - like the dutiful management consultant he is - seated in a hotel lobby waiting for a group of senior managers to digest the first reading of his searing report into their many and manifest deficiencies.

Awkward moments as you can imagine. Will they fall at his feet to thank him for revealing all, or will they slice his corpse to many silent pieces in the hope of disguising the whole matter from shareholders? Believe me, it can go either in such delicate and fraught situations - or so Bro. Geo. tells me.

A hour or so having passed by - the report was that long and that critical - dear Bro. had wearied of staring meaningfully into space, or sipping a long emptied coffee cup. Turning to the only reading material to hand - all copies of Nietzsche left tucked in his briefcase in the meeting room - he mused on the delicious single malts on offer: Lowland or Highland or Isles, so many from which to choose.

Though it were but ten of the morning, it also being a hotel, the bar was open. Should he order a single glass of each and every one? Should perhaps it rather be a double? Or maybe to take a geographic tour from South to North to West?

That there was pressing need for a de-stressing ingestion of spirits to refresh the spirit was, it seems, quite the matter of the moment. Geo. knowing his report would challenge, Geo. also knowing with what strong emotion such a challenge would be faced by the challenged, a state of alcoholic stupor was terribly tempting.

Consultants though, it would seem, drink less on duty than the most abstemious copper so naked he faced the growlers and the howlers.

Growl and howl it seems they duly did. To an extent that the long-awaited evening snorter turned into a midnight special, leading to a morning's hangover beyond the skill of even a Jeeves. (Not that the Bro. has a manservant as such, but if he did that person would have been - howsoever Jeevesean in resemblance - utterly at a loss to salve his suffering master.)

But with the morning came repentance - theirs not his even. For on reflection, taking it all in all and in the round and under consideration etc., etc., they had accepted, after all, that Geo's harsh words had been as true as they were astute.

Now that does call for a large glass of the finest malt for a job well done that this study can offer.