The Anatomy of an Ice Cream Float

Summer means St Andrews, and that, despite the passage of time, has always meant ice cream floats. The place, and taste, are so ingrained into my being that I can close my eyes and recall each change like a scar on the landscape of my world. A new building here, a cafe closed there - the expansion of the world and the shrinking of the family can all be held at bay by an ice cream float.

Dad would throw it into anything, a mug, a bowl, a pint glass pilfered from a pub; dad's ice cream floats were held together by their flavour, but they had nothing in common with the real thing. Like a good whisky in a plastic cup, they touched the tongue right, but sat poorly on the eye and in the hand. It was just one of the ways in which he differed entirely from his own father, my gramps. The ice cream float was a bridge between them and me and the summer, and it held everything in tenuous harmony.

Every family does it differently, and ours came from gramps. A wiry, brown-faced, shallow-cheeked man who always looked old, or so it seemed, he had a peculiar way in most of his life. He was particular about many things, but never more so than when it came to food.

He had big, dry, careful hands that could pick out a skelf, mend a necklace, and sand down an antique table with care - so when he took it into his head to make us floats, they were perfect.

He had special glasses, tall and curved like vases with thick ribs on the sides. The were made of glass petals, bought as a job lot at a car boot sale somewhere outside of Strathyre, and they were perfect. They only came out for the floats, and usually only in summer (a winter ice cream float was a particularly devious treat that we tucked between our knees behind the thick, velvet curtains while the fire hissed and pushed musty, hot air into the room). We liked the way they felt, my cousins and I, in our small hands; they were perfect.

Picture the ideal sundae glass and you'll be seeing these glasses.

Gramps had a particular way of creating ice cream floats. They had a distinct anatomy that marked them out as Proper. Anything less was a cheap knock-off - delicious but not quite right.

Here's how it went; two thick scoops of creamy vanilla ice cream. It had to be the right kind, too, and I'll never forgive myself for forgetting the brand name. It had a blue and cream tub and a hard plastic lid that made a satisfying "crack!" sound when it was opened. On top of this ice cream went Barr's ginger beer - anything else was less. Lemonade could substitute it in a pinch, but for the real deal it had to be ginger beer and it had to be Barr's.

We'd watch it fizz and see the cloudy juice go milky as a creamy foam formed at the top of the glass. Then a long-handled spoon, dull steel in colour, was pushed all the way down and whirled to make the ice cream rise. If we were good, there might even be a swirl of skooshy cream (that's whipped cream in a can, to American readers).

In St Andrews, this was rare - Gramps didn't really come with us. Emphysema, brittle bones, and general illness kept him home (along with a love for his roses that couldn't be held at bay), so we made do with dad's concoctions or grans lovingly-made replicas.

But the real treat, the moments that are branded into my mind as the spirit of summer, were the moments when we could take those big, thick sundae glasses and walk into gramps' garden. In late July the sun would warm the rough concrete path so that it felt like sitting in a warm bath, a pool of golden sunlight with sticky ginger and vanilla on our fingers and the dog, Goldie, weaving between us to foray into the lush, grass beneath the holly tree. Monstrous hydrangeas and thick-stemmed lillies shivered in the hot summer air and the bumble bees that really owned the garden would dip to our glasses lazily before being gently scooped away by a swishing magazine or hat.

These moments were devoid of any purpose. Dolce far niente, is the Italian phrase, I think - the beauty of doing nothing. Doing anything without boredom, without the need for an outcome.

When I make an ice cream float, these days, I can close my eyes and see the strong, weathered hand that used to make them. I can feel the hot stone on my legs and smell the dust wedged in the creeping cracks along the back lanes near my grandparents' house. And from there it's an easy leap to the glittering waters of the river at Strathyre, the sharp smell of the rock pools in St Andrews, the smell of varnish and musty fabric at the car boot sale and the sensation of being held without any doubt. Being held firmly in the hands of someone who has never doubted your value nor considered setting you down, in the way that only a grandparent can.

When you think about it, that's so much for a ginger and vanilla ice cream float to hold, but I think it does so admirably.