Gin Christmas Quotes

Keep the change, Gin," McCallister said in a smarmy, mocking voice. "Consider it an early Christmas present." "Aw," I drawled. "A whopping thirteen cents. You're too kind, Jonah. Why, you'd put Ebezener Scrooge to shame with your bighearted generosity.

We wish you a merry Christmas” is the most demanding song ever. It starts off all nice and a second later you have an angry mob at your door scream-singing, “Now bring us some figgy pudding and bring it RIGHT HERE. WE WON’T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME SO BRING IT RIGHT HERE.” Also, they’re rhyming “here” with “here.” That’s just sloppy. I’m not rewarding unrequested, lazy singers with their aggressive pudding demands. There should be a remix of that song that homeowners can sing that’s all “I didn’t even ask for your shitty song, you filthy beggars. I’ve called the cops. Who is this even working on? Has anyone you’ve tried this on actually given you pudding? Fig-flavored pudding? Is that even a thing?” It doesn’t rhyme but it’s not like they’re trying either. And then the carolers would be like, “SO BRING US SOME GIN AND TONIC AND LET’S HAVE A BEER,” and then I’d be like, “Well, I guess that’s more reasonable. Fine. You can come in for one drink.” Technically that would be a good way to get free booze. Like trick-or-treat but for singy alcoholics. Oh my God, I finally understand caroling.

For the first time, I was glad that Finn had badgered me into buying the Aston, because the car purred into high gear with no visible effort and hugged the road better than a creepy old uncle at Christmas, not wanting to let go of his pretty young relatives.

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light. Suddenly one of the gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the FOLLIES. The party has begun.

The girls noticed that Volodia, who was generally so talkative and gay, seldom spoke now and never smiled and on the whole did not seem glad to be at home. He only addressed his sisters once during dinner and then his remark was strange. He pointed to the samovar and said: “In California they drink gin instead of tea.” He, too, seemed to be busy with thoughts of his own, and, to judge from the glances that the two boys occasionally exchanged, their thoughts were identical.

At the corner of the bar, a conversation rose in decibel, becoming animated. “Yo, Frank, take a look at what just walked in! Is it Christmas already? ‘Cause that sure is a pretty package.” “You got that right. . . . Wouldn’t mind unwrapping her bows.” Instinctively, Sean cast a glance over his shoulder and groaned in despair. The scene from Casablanca played in his mind. . .Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she had to walk into mine. This could not be happening. This was his turf, his town, his bar. She had no right to trespass. Okay, so this wasn’t Casablanca. This wasn’t Rick’s Café. Sam’s fingers weren’t summoning the haunting melody, “As Time Goes By,” from the ivories of an old upright piano. There weren’t any ceiling fans with long propeller-like blades slicing through thick clouds of cigarette smoke, nor were the voices that could be heard an exotic mélange of foreign languages and accents. But those differences were superficial, of no consequence. The only thing that really mattered was that Sean understood exactly how Bogie felt when his eyes lit on Ingrid Bergman. That terrible mix of bitterness, longing, and fury eating away at him. He groaned again. At the sound, the two men sitting at the corner of the bar broke off their conversation, eyeing Sean curiously. Just as quickly, they dismissed him and returned to their avid inspection. “Must be lost or confused. Palm Beach is twenty-five miles north.” “Let’s be friendly and give her directions. How ‘bout that, Ray?” “You frigging nuts? The only directions I’m giving her are to the slip where my houseboat’s moored.

How precarious that safety was, he didn’t realize. It was shattered, at last, by means of a trifling accident. Christmas had passed. By this time the sudden splendours of spring had waned. Now Meerlust lay like an island of heavier green in a tawny sea of veld that swept upward wave beyond wave to the arching sky. The rivers ran down to the sea in a gin-clear trickle. The scattered rocks of the wilderness radiated fierce heat.