Welcome back, friends!
We trust that you had a pleasant (urgh, such a *cheerful* word) holiday season? We at the Lodge rang in the new year in our time-honoured traditional way – drinking lots of flavoured gin, eating wheels upon wheels of cheese, and burning an effigy of Mariah Carey to repel her for another 11 months. She always finds a way of returning earlier and earlier each year, though…
Anyway, enough of looking back; let’s look forward to what January and the rest of the year will bring.
Start things off on an uplifting note for the good people, would you, Beelzebub?
Blue Monday
Monday the 15th of January is officially the most depressing day of the year. That’s because the Christmas festivities are long behind us, the weather is awful, everyone is broke, and it feels like payday is 154 days away.
Editor’s note: We’re sorry about this, friends. He thinks he’s being funny.
This is the only time that we’ll recommend chasing away something miserable, so heed it well:
Now that it’s over, stock up on your favourite Black Lodge Potions here and make Blue Monday a Mauve Monday Memory at worst.
In all seriousness for a second, if you are struggling, drinking isn’t the answer. Here is a list of charities and mental health crisis helplines if you need to talk to someone.
Trentham Makers Market
We’ll be out and about on the 20th of this month for our first live event of the year at the Trentham Makers Market in Stoke. We’ve been coming to this fantastic venue for a while now, and we’d love to see you there.
The mad monks that we send to these events need to work on their people skills after being cooped up on their own in the old abattoir over Christmas, so you’d be doing us a favour if you could stop by and say hello.
There’ll be free samples of our elixirs to try and free tetanus shots if Brother G tries to bite you, so make sure you visit us if you’re in the area.
Burns Night
Imagine our disappointment when we found out that this January tradition wasn’t quite as arson-inducing as it first sounded.
No, January 25th is the day the Scots celebrate their national poet, Robert Burns. This started way back in 1801, when a group of Burns’ friends gathered to remember him on his birthday. Neeps (turnips), tatties (potatoes), and haggis (don’t ask) are all traditionally served while the poetry of the great man himself is read aloud. It’s also traditional to have a wee dram to toast his health.
This ritual has been performed every year since, but it’s expanded to become a national celebration and is now one of the biggest events on the Scottish social calendar.
If you’re planning on having a ‘Rabbie Burns’ party of your own, Slà inte Mhath!
Until next time…
Well, we think that about wraps things up for now. As we leave the ink to dry on the Black Lodge journal for another month, we’d like to hear from you about what you’d like to see from these messages for the coming year.
Would you like to know more about what goes on behind the scenes at the Black Lodge? Would it interest you to know how we got started? Would it tickle you to learn how we choose our ingredients? How about more in the way of what foods go well with our drinks and what cocktails you could make with them?
Drop us a line at [email protected] and we’ll see what we can do.
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We’ll be back in February with more macabre messages and distinctly devilish drink distractions but until then,
Stay spooky,
Brother G and Brother T
