Free Myles Away From Dublin by Flann O’Brien Page B

the seventh son of a seventh son. Your water-diviner does not bother about genealogy. ‘You want to find water?’ he says bluntly. ‘OK. Give me a few quid and I’ll find it within 50 yards of your house.’ The terrifying thing is that he does just that.
    But my own interest in this theme is broader. The miracle Irishman is narrow-minded and thinks of nothing but water. In fact oil, gold and dead bodies can be discerned.
    The word ‘dowse’ is of Cornish origin, and therefore Celtic. It may seem silly to picture Sherlock Holmes going out for a walk carrying a strange walking stick but if he did so he might solve his mysteries quicker.

A very strange case indeed
    Here is a curious news item which the reader may have seen but which I reproduce to jolt the memory:
    The largely Scottish settlement of Invercargill, New Zealand, is up in arms. Some unscrupulous character between Britain and Invercargill, the world’s southernmost city, has jeopardised the citizens’ supply of life blood.
    Ten cases, part of a consignment unloaded from the Sydney Star at the city’s Port Bluff, contained bricks instead of whisky.
    Somewhere between the distilleries in Scotland and the last port of call – Liverpool – the whisky bottles had been removed and each case replaced with bricks of an equal weight and neatly packed in straw. New Zealand customs officials are satisfied that the switch did not take place in New Zealand. The bricks are of a type not manufactured in New Zealand.
    The switch had the hallmarks of a professional.
    I feel several comments are called for here. Did not the agents who received the consignment act rather hastily? How did they know that those bricks were not whiskey? I’m serious. I am sure it is possible to change liquor into a solid form with, of course, a process for reliquifying it if desired ( – though, indeed, what’s wrong with eating one’s booze? A good plate of whiskey and chips might startle our tourists at first but ultimately attract them here in hordes). It is a fact that the fabulous rockets which now traverse space are powered by solid fuel, and it is pretty certain that domestic alcohol can be solidified also. That apart, I am sure that teetotallars will agree that a genuine brick is far more valuable than a bottle of whiskey. If one had enough of them, one could build a house. Who ever heard of a house being built with whiskey bottles? I have heard of houses being brought to ruinous decay with them.

We Should Experiment
    In this country we have chemical and physical research bodies, in the universities and elsewhere, and I do think they should be asked to investigate the possibility of converting spirits and even beers into solid concentrates. What is called proof spirit is roughly half pure alcohol and half water. I imagine this water would have to be ignored and the alcohol only changed into cubes of the size, say, of sugar lumps. A person with a whiskey lump could thus, by liquifying it in water just as one melts sugar, have a drink of whatever potency he fancied.
    Such factors as bottling, transportation, storage space, warehousing and breakages add materially to the price of whiskey as we know it. The cube system would practically eliminate them all.
    And no doubt the new system would bring about many social changes. Reckless fellows would enter a café, order a large black coffee, and quietly drop perhaps half a whiskey cube into it, meditatively stir the cup, and then imbibe. There you would have ‘Irish Coffee’ with a vengeance! And the cubes could probably be sucked in bed, like sweets.
    Also, the whole structure and appearance of pubs would change, becoming perhaps like modest chemist’s shops, or beauty parlours. But customers would not be long in getting used to going in and asking for half a pound of whiskey, please. And at festive times it would be seemly to have the cubes on offer in attractive containers, like boxes of chocolates, with a view of the lakes of