With regard to the third letter, more people need to learn the lessons of Madonna’s song The Power of Goodbye and make more of them. Particularly for very young people, it seems the odds of continued friendship with the ex being healthy and helpful to them are quite low. Plus a lot of the time, staying “friends” is…

Is this Davidson returning fire because Chevy Chave said SNL was terrible now? Otherwise it feels redundant, most people have heard Chevy Chase is not universally beloved.....

I liked Blink last season. Wish they’d kept Sonia/Dreamer around a bit longer though.

Unusually for me I got bored of this before the end of S1. I thought a Matt Nix run show would be slightly more fun than this was. I think it is perfectly possible to liven up some pretty bleak material with the odd moment of humour. Even 24 did that from time to time.

If it is bitter, maybe try it with a sweet booze like tequila?

I love a well-made Long Island Iced Tea but unfortunately the places in my hometown all do that thing where they don’t really balance their versions out very well so it ends up tasting like lighter fluid poorly disguised with a smidge of coke.

It’s like that Billy Joel song...

I did not know Vermouth went off so quickly but to be fair I’ve never been in danger of keeping any booze as long as 5 weeks ;-)

I like both kinds of drinking myself. Nice cocktails are fun but some days, you just need a bottle of red wine or a few glasses of whiskey.

Agreed. I wanted to buy some to make cocktails at my aunt’s house (she had all the basics in terms of gin, vodka, bourbon, brandy etc) but was deterred by the price. They should sell a smaller version for a bit less.

Gin, vermouth and fresh orange is a really nice drink.

It’s obvious but Chambord is quite good to mix with cheaper and/or dry Prosecco. I wouldn’t mix it with good prosecco though.

The colour of that is something to behold. Out of interest if you get heavy handed does it become unbearably choking/spicy?

Here in the UK, violet gin recently became very trendy but it has a similar problem. You have to dilute it quite a lot with lemonade to make it drinkable (an overly strong violet taste is not pleasant) so you basically end up with quite a weak alcoholic drink that tastes faintly of sweets.

Gin, vermouth and fresh orange is a lovely drink. The vermouth smoothes the gin out.

Am I the only one who hates Baileys by the way?

I had never heard of Cynar before but it sounds like an alternative to Angostura Bitters:

Triple Sec goes in Long Island Iced Tea so I was going to buy some years ago but was deterred by the price. A lot of these minor cocktail ingredients are quite pricy.

I don’t think it is depressing now (I’m in my 30s) but I would have done when I was younger. I think as you get older, you start to see your parents and grandparents more as people with their own histories and secrets and the idea that your parents/grandparents are their own people is less threatening.

Well for me, it wasn’t enough not to feel like a big old retcon.