Occasionally, just to keep our noses and palates finely tuned, Clutch and I will have an impromptu private tasting of single malts at either of our places. It’s the kind of training regimen that Rocky Balboa would be proud of.
On one of these evenings, we did a bit of a marathon session, where we sampled a number of different whiskies. Some of them several times, just to be certain of our verdict. There was a Talisker Distiller’s Edition 1993, of which we approved wholeheartedly (but went back a few times to ascertain that fact), and a Laphroaig 15, which took several samples for us to arrive at a verdict (we liked it).
At the end of the evening, as Clutch awaited his taxi home, he noticed a frog sitting in my front garden. I’d never seen a frog up close before (really), and so we found a large jar so that we could capture it, look at it closely, and then release it back into the wild.
Oddly, our hand-eye coordination wasn’t at top spec, but all the same we managed to coax the frog to jump into the jar (actually, it just did it all by itself), and I took a few photos before putting it back where we found it, bemused but entirely unharmed.
And had we not had the photographic evidence, claiming to have discovered amphibious life in our decidedly non aquatic neighbourhood might have aroused suspicions of drunkenness from our respective spouses. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Trained professionals, on a night of serious research and attunement. That said, we did find the name La Phrog disproportionately hilarious.