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my tongue. I conjured up a tracking shot of the wildlife attracted to the wooded coastline that stretched up past the Victorian Kildalton Castle.
    Our next dram was Caol Ila. The distillery is snuggled just along the coast from Port Askaig on the Sound of Jura. To get there we had to backtrack, since there was no direct route. We sped through Port Ellen and along the A846. The peatbogs flanking this remarkably straight road play a major role in giving Islay whiskies their distinctive flavour. We didn’t stop in Bowmore, Alan said we’d return later, we simply sped on through Bridgend to Port Askaig. I was told a five-minute ferry ride to Feolin on Jura would provide me with the best view of Caol Ila. I was to picture the boat putting out, then imagine looking back at Islay and seeing the distillery just north of the ferry terminal. Once I was off the ferry, I was to climb up to the track that runs from Feolin to Inver. Looking across the Sound would provide a perfect view of the distillery with the sea shimmering in the foreground. The malt was less smoky than those from the south of Islay but still highly enjoyable.
    Alan had been to Craighouse, eight or so miles from Feolin, the main settlement for Jura’s 200 inhabitants and hence home to the island’s whisky stills. However, he wasn’t a fan of the whisky produced at the Jura distillery and since it wasn’t an item on our fantasy itinerary, we simply caught the ferry back to Port Askaig. The road north to Bunnahabhain was frighteningly narrow. Alan said he would park the car in the shoreside car park close to the distillery, then we would wander north along the coast before turning west. We’d cut across the north tip of the island, a two-hour trek each way with no roads to spoil the view and hundreds of deer all around us. On the way back, we’d get a brilliant view of the distillery with the Paps of Jura dominating the landscape from across the Sound. As I nosed and then drank my Bunnahabhain I was beginning to feel tipsy.
    I imagined I was falling asleep in the car as Alan doubled back through Port Askaig and Bridgend. I was tired after our long walk. The Bowmore distillery was in the centre of a planned village of the same name. Despite being on a sea loch, Bowmore is the psychogeographical – as well as the administrative – centre of Islay. A single Bowmore Legend was my seventh successive dram and my palate was shot to pieces. Alan’s imaginary journey followed its own logic, a serious whisky drinker would have concluded with the heavier malts from the south of Islay, we had started with them. Alan told me to picture doubling back once again to Bridgend, then instead of heading for Port Askaig, we’d follow the road around Loch Indaal to Bruichladdich. This is the most westerly distillery in Scotland and after I’d downed my dram, we left the pub. Alan wanted to go home alone and read. Before we parted he gave me a copy of 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess , saying he’d like to know what I thought of it. I made my way to King Street, had a bath and took to my bed.

THREE
    IN MY dream I was flying and then I was running along tracks. I was the Vienna-to-Belgrade express train. I collapsed into human form as the train pulled into Budapest. The station was old and had been conceived on a grand scale but the roof was smashed and dirty. I alighted from the train and Dudley the ventriloquist’s dummy was waiting for me on the platform. We ran a gauntlet of impoverished Hungarians offering cheap accommodation before we finally made it out through the subway and onto the street. It was sunny and Dudley was using a 1989 edition of Hungary: The Rough Guide to find his way around town. All the street names had changed since the book had been published and it thus provided us with a wonderfully disorientating psychogeographical experience.
    It was three hours since I’d left Vienna and I felt famished. We ate in a restaurant just off Erzsébet Körút called