About your Gin Lovers

About Juliet, your blogger

It all started over 20 years ago, when I drank pints of lager and met Bruce who drank pints of real ale; and we got drunk together at a pub in Princetown on Dartmoor. Later on, this wonderful man became my husband, I moved in with him and we started a chaotic life together with three cats and two large dogs, no kids, rebuilt most of our tumbledown house, looked after beloved parents and then semi-retired, slowing down a little and finding time to enjoy a gin and tonic of a summer evening.

We still run our business as copywriters, mainly for the construction industry, which was how and where we really got into gin. For me, gin began with my first ever one-to one interview with the CEO of a window manufacturing business at the Ritz – I was scared to death, so the pr blokes who’d had invited me there for the interview decided to buy me a huge G&T instead of the coffee I’d ordered ….. three of these later, I could’ve interviewed the Queen! (Yes, she who apparently tweeted ‘gin o’clock’ ♯OnIt)!

So began our love affair with gin ….. and tonics. Further enhanced when my hubs built a decking area just beyond our veggie patch or, rather grandly, ‘the allotment.’ Here, in the summer, is a gloriously sunny and sheltered spot created – indeed, destined – to be a place to drink an ice cold G&T after a hard day’s graft.

Even the dog knows when it’s time to go to the G&T decking; he hears the tonic being poured, the ice being retrieved from the freezer, and the gin being selected from the larder ….. he squeals with excitement and dashes off down there, to await, with great expectation, for us to arrive with our refreshments and a few doggy biscuits.

It was also here that the idea was born to start this blog ….. we hope you enjoy it!

About Bruce, your blogger

My passport says I was born at RAF Halton, though as a forces brat my parents were just passing through: which is why I never lived in Buckinghamshire and had been to a dozen schools by the time I reached my teens. Then they bought a house at Stow-on-the-Wold, where four years at Westwoods Grammar School salvaged my education as dad kept moving.

Also got a taste for real ale working part time in the White Hart where an elderly gent used to arrive at 11 am every morning to have his hip flask topped up with Geneva Gin out of that distinctive brown stone bottle.

My early tastes of the juniper juice came in the shape of Pimm’s No 1 Original Gin Sling and the Gordon’s which appeared in the house at Christmas: neither of which really impressed me back then, and I didn’t touch the stuff during my time studying civil engineering at Portsmouth Poly, or working on construction jobs around London.

Then you could say my eyes were opened to gin by becoming partially sighted, as a problem with my optic nerves forced me out of engineering – and driving you’ll be glad to know – eventually drifting into construction journalism, via some fairly grimy labouring jobs.

Anyone who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch knows nothing about journalism: in 1986 I went from earning £28 a day digging drains to being paid £35 a time to attend press conferences for Building Design and other magazines; where G&Ts, wine and champagne were the polite things to drink with the buffet. I went to three in a day once, and got paid extra to write about the products being launched.

Still banging out copy about buildings 30 years on and enjoying it, though the gin blog allows a little more freedom of expression. Along with Juliet I love big dogs, character houses, rugby, strong ales, many gins, cooking, and the British countryside, especially The Cotswolds.