No amaro!

I forgot to attend a drinks event last night.

Eeeeek!

Cocktail competition Montenegro The Vero Bartender 2026 brought together six of the country’s most exciting bartenders for a one-night-only takeover in Circular Quay at Acapulco El Vista.

Look how gorgeous the venue is …

I am usually very reliable, but I was soooooo knackered from insomnia and my weekend away. I only wearily remembered at 7.30pm that I was supposed to be in the city sipping amaro.

It promised to be very fabulous too – an immersive, 1960s-inspired evening of cocktails, music and atmosphere. Sigh. I’d even picked a themed outfit to wear.

Instead, I completely vagued out and wandered to Woolies to get some tofu for dinner to toss with some leftover Thai takeaway veggies.

As I was walking into the supermarket, my sister was walking out. Small world! We had a natter on the footpath before urging each other to hurry up and win the lottery, then heading off to our respective bus stops.

But I could have been nibbling complementary canapes and drinking fabulous Amaro Montenegro cocktails with a spectacular view of the Harbour Bridge.

Epic fail.

Ah, well, the dogs were pleased to see me.

My brain wasn’t the only slow thing yesterday. My work laptop kept throwing hissy fits and refusing to load web pages. I thought I must have overfilled my cache or something, but nothing seemed to fix the problem.

I eventually gave up and phoned the help desk. A bloke called Matthew jumped onto my laptop using Team Viewer, but he was completely confounded by the problem too. He had to raise a ticket with a more hardcore help desk that will get back to me at some time or other.

Right.

Meanwhile it’s a bit tricky to get much done with all the error messages thwarting me.

But I will traipse into the office today regardless.

I slept a little better last night so hopefully my brain will be a bit more in gear, even if the hardware continues to fail me.

Oh, and if you haven’t heard of amaro, here’s how Lulu Morris at Dan Murphy’s describes it: “Amaro is the Italian word for “bitter” and is best described as a bittersweet liqueur.

“First concocted yonks ago as a kind of makeshift medicine, it’s still traditionally used to settle the stomach and aid digestion (known as a digestive) after an intense Italian meal. Amaro is made by macerating botanicals like roots, spices, herbs, citrus and even veggies (to name a few) in a base alcohol, mixing that filtrate with sugar and then letting it age in casks or bottles.”

Some famous cocktails that contain amaro are the Paper Plane and Negroni.

There you go. And off to work I go.

Song of the day: Nat King Cole “Unforgettable”