It's the end of another year so it must be time for a drink.

That's not the sort of sentiment that seems especially popular these days. But every day is cocktail day here at the Watusi Country Club so I think it only right to offer a recipe for summer fun. It'll be at the end so just skip the next five hundred words if you're feeling particularly thirsty.

Because, being the last column of the 2012 I guess it is vaguely traditional to look back at the year and pick the good and bad bits. Hmmm...

Let's skip that. Instead I'd like to write a little about a dear friend of mine who had a long association with Tauranga and who died in November after a struggle with cancer.

His name was Bruce Morley. He was a drummer, a writer, a radio programmer, a New Zealand music lobbyist, a tennis player, a historian, and a passionate advocate for the genius of Bix Beiderbecke.

He lived here for a couple of years in the late eighties but as far back as 1964 he led the Bruce Morley Sextet at the only the second Tauranga Jazz Festival.

I don't really want to get into a full-scale biography of Bruce, because that would probably take the rest of the column. But let's indulge a little...

Bruce drummed with a staggering and eclectic range of people. Check this lot out: Cleo Laine and John Dankworth, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, Matt Monro, Johnny Tillotson, Rolf Harris, Marty Feldman, Cilla Black, Vera Lynn, Winifred Atwell, Danny la Rue, Vince Hill, Tiny Tim, Ronnie Corbett, Des O'Connor, Val Doonican, the Inkspots, John Rowles, Shona Laing, Robbie Ratana, Larry Morris, Suzanne, John Grenell, Midge Marsden, Billy T. James, Howard Morrison, Suzanne Prentice, Ritchie Pickett, Patsy Riggir, Tom Sharplin, Ray Woolf, Ray Columbus, Gray Bartlett and Brendan Dugan. And that barely scratches the surface.

He wrote scripts for Tainui Stephens' great documentary series on Maori musicians, When the Haka Became Boogie; he was the founding music director at Radio Pacific in 1979; during the eighties and nineties he was one of the main petitioners for a New Zealand music quota on radio; he played in theatre bands for years, including the premieres of Hair and Oh Calcutta; he helped put together the first issue of NZ Musician Magazine in September 1988 and continued to write for the magazine for over two decades.

But those are just facts from a life well lived. As I said, Bruce was friend and I think the thing I've taken most from the years we knew each other was that Bruce was someone who believed that pleasure is greater if it is shared. I'd often get calls from him because he'd discovered a new piece of music (it was Bruce who introduced me to the brilliant William Shatner album Has Been, as well the drumming of Shelley Manne) or read a particularly interesting book, and he just had to share it with someone.

That's a good way to live. It's very easy to be insular, to horde your joys like a collector amassing the biggest pile of gold. But pleasures, be they a poem or a clarinet solo or a cocktail recipe are not diminished by sharing, they are increased, and Bruce knew that.

And with that in mind, I'd like to suggest a cocktail. Last year it was daiquiris all round, this year at the Country Club we're taking a trip back to the seventies, that time when sophisticated folk would sip Mateus Rose or Babysham, and make little crosses of chocolate on top of their Brandy Alexanders.

So grab your cocktail shaker. Add a couple of measures of Galliano; add a couple of measures of Cointeau; add a couple of measures of orange juice (that's fresh orange juice, squeeze it yourself for maximum pleasure); add a couple of measures of cream. Then add a dash more cream, some ice, shake vigorously and strain it into a glass, preferably one of those flat types which was once used for creating champagne towers.

And enjoy.

Just remember folks - drink responsibly (or stay at home and drink outrageously) and have a happy new year.