I sit alone in my carton smelling of cardboard and alcohol. The smell is tolerable but the hurt stems from the loneliness. Alcohol bottles as you can imagine keep quite to themselves. It’s part of our packaging as you know. I am a rare breed of alcohol; I come from a long Irish lineage of alcoholic creams. You may say I’m a ‘crème-De-la-crème’. After years of processing, purifying, blending and mixing I was corked into this claustrophobic bottle and branded Bailey’s Fine Irish Cream. But that was all in the past.
I have been repackaged since then so many times I’ve forgotten my ‘Birthday’. The only date, the only memory etched in my olive green mind is the day I fell Base over Cork in love.
It was a sunny morning when I was uncorked to be used for the first time. It was then that I saw her, with her beautiful white cap, her demure soft curves and crumply crackly freshness. It was “love at first sight” for good old me. I rocked as far forward as I could and just managed to catch a glimpse of her name – Bailley’s Mineral Water.
She was picked up and poured into a bowl and that was when my heart stopped for a second time. Her contents, sparkly, babbled pure bubbled out filling my heart with a desire I had never felt before. Her contents were boiled and concocted into a brew. It was then that I was added to this brew as a topping.
I remember nothing more of the rest of the day; or the rest of my contents for that matter. All I thought of was her; her look, her feel, her touch. I hoped and prayed fervently to see her again but alas that was not to be. I never saw her again.
It has been many labels since (You see, that is the only way I keep time) and each day I pray to the Bottle Gods to grant me a chance to be with her in “BottleLana” (Our heaven where bottles are always full and caps always open).
And here I am, stuck again amidst my alcoholic horde as I wait and wait to be Bailey in Love again.
Vivek
