City heat

Sometimes you want a cocktail to taste like exhaust fumes. Or eating the bitter stem of a herb. A chicory salad, leaves grown beside a motorway.

Perfumes too. The wall of jasmine is beautiful in its breath but so too is the smell of stalks and dirt, of harbour concrete, of sappy fresh-cut trees and sweat.

Cross the road in a city that’s stinking hot. The tarmac heat rises to warm your chin. It smells of nearby takeaways and bins and warm engines. Come over, bring the Campari and the rind.