Spring Cordial

Another of those bottles sitting on the shelves behind the bar at the Mended Drum and which has been there for years gathering dust. This is the sulphurous yellow sticky one with the dead wasps in it. No, it's meant to have dead wasps floating in it. Like the neighbouring bottle of Peach Corniche, no self-respecting barman ever expects to actually sell any of it. It may have been originaly bought in up to twenty years ago when a new landlord made one of those periodic and doomed attempts to take the Drum upmarket, this time by offering a cocktail menu, and left behind as a forgotten and forlorn relic after the death of another marketing illusion. If viewed at all, it's part of the background decor and ambience, as every long-established pub should have a few shelves of similar-looking bottles up behind the bar. There's probably some sort of ancient ordinance governing these things. And even in the worst and most destructive pub fight, even if the barman should deliberately press such a bottle into the hand of a villainous-looking fighter and invite him to "be my guest..." then what do you know? The Spring Cordial and the Peach Corniche will survive intact.