Potcheen

It's a new academic year, and the winds of change have bought me American housemates. They're all good, honest Blue Staters, which was the biggest worry. What I didn't forsee was that one of them would use the powers of darkness to make a smoothie.

It was made in a blender, and it had ice-cream as an ingredient. I think there was chocolate, and maybe peanut butter? What I did know when I sipped from the brimming mug was that I had ceased to have volition of my own. I would have killed for that drink.

When the final drip passed my lips I looked into the mug and knew that it had broken me, like a ship breaking itself on the shoreline. There is no-one man enough for that brew. Driven into a Boschian vision in my bed I struggled, facing a maelstrom of sodium orange and the first light of day.

No good, witch. In the end, I bested it.

I'm prepared to listen to critics who might claim that my malaise was due to the fact that at 11 I had decided to have a snifter of port and retire but instead had a tumbler of the red stuff and then proceeded to discuss fundamentalism for four hours. I shake my head paternally at those people. The simple truth is our Ms. Baker is an avatar of darkness.

find a word for what that is