Where were you in June 1983? come to think of it, why does it matter? Because according to our calculations it was the midway point between the end of World War 2 and what seems to be World War 3. For between the signing of the Japanese article of surrender in September 1945 and Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 the world enjoyed 77 years where there was peace somewhere, and even the hope it might continue. Numbers are fuzzy things when you work up close, but according to our calculation, the mid point would have fallen in the summer of 1983, perhaps in June. From then on, without knowing it, you were steadily moving closer to World War Three than you were to the previous conflict.
What was it like in that long-lost summer? Well Mrs Thatcher won a resounding majority of 144 in the UK General Election. James Bond starred in his thirteenth film, Octopussy. The charts were topped by the Police with their popular ditty Every breath you take (although with hindsight David Bowie‘s China Girl seems ominously prescient) And Edmund Blackadder made his debut on UK TV.
It was a brash, raucous age. Cocktails were on the way in at all levels of society. Perhaps none so captures the mood of the times as the famous Piña Colada. Everyone from Lanzarotte to Mid-Lanark ordered one, because for many it was the only name they new in that far off summer
So to bring back the spirit of those times take a cocktail shaker. To it add two measures of coconut cream, 1 measure of white rum and two measures of pineapple juice, Shake and pour to a hurricane glass an decorate with a cherry, pineapple slice and orange slice. A raise a toast to the brave people of Ukraine ,and the brave protestors in Russia. Both are attempting to resist a monstrous tyranny, and so are braver than you or we will ever know how to be.
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