Evening draws in on the last day before a summer starts, it’s a good time for a stiff drink. The only readymade mixers available are a really nasty, sweetener infused, Polish budget juicedrink-like drink and a month old cranberry juice drink. Thoughts turned to juicing, thoughts were tired so they turned to easy jucing. This, first, JN cocktail recipe is as simple as can be and as good as it gets for hard-chill in the evening sun.

I used 2 x medium sized, rough looking, lemons and 2 x tsp fine sugar and some London tap water and four good splashes of vodka from the freezer to make two stiff drinks.

The lemons were juiced with a classic plastic manual citrus press and added to glasses containing the vodka. Water was added to dilute the mixture 50:50. Two teaspoons of sugar per glass, stirred in, ice would have been nice.