L’Epicurienne

This competition has now closed. Read Jonathan Ray’s post-competition blog here.

I’m hoping you might forgive a little self indulgence with our latest competition. My dear old dad Cyril Ray – formerly assistant editor of this very magazine (in the days of Inglis, Levin and Whitehorn) and twenty times the writer about drink (or indeed anything else) that I could ever hope to be – died 25 years ago this month.

He wrote and edited countless books about wine, food and social history including Merry England, Bollinger, Lafite, Cognac, In a Glass Lightly and the long-running series The Compleat Imbiber. The tome dearest to his heart, however, was a slim volume of saucy verse he produced in cahoots with his equally dirty-minded artist friend Charles Mozley, entitled Lickerish Limericks with Filthy Pictures.

My favourite of these, entitled Dolce Far Niente, runs thus:

I was sitting there, taking my ease,