Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [1119]

It was the lonely hour of fifteen. A tinny music trickled from the telescreens. … Unbidden, a waiter came and filled his glass up with Victory Gin, shaking into it a few drops from another bottle with a quill through the cork. It was saccharine flavoured with cloves, the speciality of the café. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 1119

Note

‘The lonely hour of fifteen’ — the time of day named by its digit, the hours emptied and renumbered by the regime. The ‘trickled… music’ from the telescreens (later ‘cracked and jeering’) sets the ambient texture; the quill-and-cork detail of the doctored gin is pure Orwellian observation of squalor.