Brandy 7 Ways
By Jane Bloomfield
Listen to a reading of this piece by Jane:
At my husband’s Wild West 40th birthday party I dressed myself as Brandy the slutty cowgirl for the duration of the ho-down
I worked for a woman called Karen before Karen was a proper noun she poured us Brandy and diet ginger ales and smoked Winfield Lights while I cooked the meat and three veg with sauces at 5 pm then put them in a stainless steel electric warmer to sweat covered until dinner at six when the single shepherd came in Karen was happy by then but not hungry the cloying artificial ginger sweetness clung to the back of my throat well past the mutton gravy when I tucked the children into bed I was the sixteen year old live-in nanny
Brandy is recommended in times of shock death divorce being left a crumbling chateau in Burgundy by a long lost cousin once removed a grey-haired black man smacked me on the chops when I was leaving the Notting Hill carnival in ‘84 maybe he took offence at my strapless cream lace debutante meringue of a long vintage dress in that alley I didn’t stick around to ask I retreated to my French lover’s flat nearby he was peeling the skin off roasted red peppers at the kitchen table his fingers drenched in olive oil he told me Brandy originates from the Dutch word Brandewijn meaning ‘burned wine’ and poured me a red to soothe my stinging face
When I was a temp in London my first placement was at the Barbican Events Centre I worked with a woman who wore Brandy like a balloon dousing herself in the heady notes of Cinnabar perfume in an attempt to conceal her Brandy consumption most evenings we’d walk together to the underground station so I could be her steady arm and help her take that vital first step onto the steep wooden escalators rattling down to the platform below
I made a Christmas cake one year and fed it a daily diet of Brandy once cooked because Nigella said that is how you treat a fruit and nut cake you gave an entire day to in the process of just combining the Brandy soaked ingredients with eggs and flours and baking in four layers of baking paper and four layers of brown paper at 150 Celsius until just right a week into turning this cake into a raving alcoholic I ate a slice with a nice cup of tea feeling like Martha Stewart when she got out of gaol and drove to town to get the children from school only realising after I picked up a hitch-hiker and giggled instructions for him to sit between the booster seats in the back I was sloshed
Calvados is a Brandy made from apple ciders originating from Normandy I sipped it with my father when I visited him in France in my twenties care for a digestif he would say after dinner very good for the digestion not really it was just adding to the level of alcohol our livers already had to break down the French have a reason for everything I don’t remember particularly liking the taste but I put a lot of effort into trying to keep up with my dad drinking in the hope some sort of close bond would form that he’d see me as one of the guys he never did
Kiwi Pop singer Bunny Walters recorded hit song Brandy in 1972 I knew all the words but couldn’t play guitar like Bunny dubbed the Māori Tom Jones I bet a lot of baby girls in Aotearoa New Zealand were named Brandy after that and girl dogs I had a neighbour Mrs Snee with a red setter named Brandy Mum told me she lived alone because she was a spinster nothing to do with spinning but two years later a boy racer spun out and hit her dog and American crooner Barry Manilow recorded Brandy renamed Mandy which made it more of a mega hit and made him and his record company a lot of money I don’t know if Mrs Snee got another red setter we moved again soon after that
Oh Brandy you came but you sure did some taking.
Aotearoa | New Zealand based writer, Jane Bloomfield, is the author of the Lily Max middle-grade trilogy. Her poetry and or CNF are published in Tarot, Turbine |Kapohau, a fine line - NZ Poetry Society, Roi Fainéant Press, Does It Have Pockets, Dust Poetry Magazine, The Spinoff, Sunday Magazine and elsewhere.