Latest news with #JohnGarforth
The Guardian
09-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
How an excise officer kept up their spirits
John Garforth's work as an excise officer (Letters, 8 May) reminds me of an ex-colleague's job as the same, visiting bonded warehouses to check the quality of the spirits kept in store. After testing, a form was presented to the officer to complete. In answer to the question: 'Was the remaining spirit disposed of in a common sewer?,' the answer always given was: 'Eventually.'Colin PhillipsLondon Congratulations to Matthew Butte (Letters, 7 May) for his perseverance and ultimate success. In a similar vein, I have been learning to play the accordion, practising every day for 10 years, and I'm still married. I'm not sure whose success is the more ForsterShipton-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire As the new pope is American (Robert Francis Prevost becomes Pope Leo XIV as cardinals elect first US pontiff, 8 May), will Trump declare the Vatican to be the 51st state?David ProtheroHarlington, Bedfordshire I knew I was getting old when first the police, then the headteachers, and now even the new popes have started to look GoreEnfield, London Pea guacamole AKA mushy peas (Letters, 4 May) is also described on one menu as 'Yorkshire caviar'.Trish DurrantBristol Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
The Guardian
08-05-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
A cocktail that's too much of a good thing
Regarding the Brompton cocktail, a mixture of heroin and cocaine that was used for severe pain in terminally ill patients (Letters, 6 May), the Glasgow recipe was heroin, cocaine, gin, Largactil and honey. It could be alarmingly effective. Many years ago, my late partner, faced with a patient in intractable pain, issued a prescription for the cocktail. In the middle of evening surgery, my partner was called to an emergency at the local pub. The patient had felt so much better, he decided to go for a drink, and the combination of the Brompton plus the traditional 'hauf an' a hauf' (whisky and ale), had proved too much. He was carried home and told to stick to soft WatersonGlasgow As an excise officer in the 1970s, I used to visit Huddersfield Royal Infirmary to authorise spirit repayment claims on excise duty on spirits used in the preparation of Brompton cocktails. I doubt very much if similar visits are made nowadays, but it made the work of excise officers GarforthIlkley, West Yorkshire I too was an apprentice pharmacist working in a pit village in the Yorkshire coalfield in the early 1960s when we received a prescription for a Brompton cocktail with varied strengths of morphine and cocaine, together with whisky and chloroform water, for a man who we knew to be terminally ill with lung disease. The prescription was presented by his wife with the message: 'And he says can he have Johnnie Walker.' We complied of course!Brian SandallWhitstable, Kent Do you have a photograph you'd like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers' best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.
