Fellow Wine Lovers,
I write to you today from the ‘sunny’ south coast where I am spending a couple of days under the cover of canvas, listening to the gentle pitter patter of drizzle on the flysheet and wondering when is a reasonable time to open a beer. It’s our annual trip, a chance to catch up with each other after a hectic school year, to see what we’ve all been up to and to spend some proper family time, without TikTok. Except there has been no dearth of family time over the last few months, I have never been so excruciatingly up-to-date with my teenage children and their idiosyncracies whilst my wife has started cycling into work even though she can more fruitfully work from home, just to get away…
But we’re out of London and actually, that is the most important thing. Leaving the environs of SW19 and venturing further than Leatherhead was enough of an adventure; for those of you who are yet to embark on such an odyssey, sadly the M25 is still there. The middle lane is still the place to travel at 50mph; the inside lane is, I believe, there for purely decorative purposes and doesn’t carry traffic, whilst the outside lane is for nutters who want to travel at 70 and enrage the middle lane tut-tutters.
Anyway we’ve got here, tent up, wood chopped, dog tethered, 2 arguments down and already we’re having fun – is now not a reasonable time to open a beer?
Meanwhile, back in the smoke, it’s been quite a week. Well actually, not really different from any other of late. Test cricket came back and with it the rain clouds on day one followed by a total collapse on day two – have we really been missing this? The Ryder Cup has been postponed and the Epsom Derby managed to sneak under our binoculars last Saturday. Rosé sales are still buoyant, barbecuing is still a thing and the Volvo is still circling the grid on a regular basis.
And, with much fanfare, pubs opened last weekend, although actually a lot of them didn’t. Likewise restaurants but not all of them. We were intrigued to watch our Chancellor dishing out meals at Wagamama’s on Wednesday, without following face mask guidelines – a very Cummingsian/Trumpian approach. Indeed, none of the staff had any masks on so, certainly not for the first time in recent history, we’re all a bit confused as to what is correct form.
This all followed Rishi’s announcement of more money from his magic money tree. I can only hope that the nurse who asked Theresa May for a pay-rise 3 years ago and was told there was no such tree has written a letter to Mr Sunak….
The most entertainment has probably come from across the pond as Mr K West reiterates his intention to run for President of the United States. His party will be called The Birthday Party and he would be running against his pal Donny T but what the hell, why not get yourself on the front page of all the papers once again, tantalise us with the jaw-dropping prospect of a Kardashian FLOTUS, even if it is all just a clever joke
In other, definitely unrelated news, ‘Wash Us in the Blood’, the new single from Kanye was ‘dropped’ last week.
And finally we can all get our nails done and our eyebrows threaded. And then go to the gym and then for a swim, as long as we don’t do the butterfly, whilst showing off our freshly inked body art. The latest round of venues allowed to re-open has been announced, and hooray for that, when you read on the other page that Boots and John Lewis are the latest to announce sweeping job cuts. We find Boot’s a bit of an odd one, being that they were allowed to be open – whilst not functioning at full capacity, agreed – it just goes to show how much of their turnover derives from all those sandwiches and bottles of water they sell.
That’s it from us – the shop is open from 4-7pm today and from 2-5pm tomorrow, to give Wayne enough chance to do all those deliveries you’ll be asking for – sunshine is on its way back and we have plenty of Rosé on board, just so you know!
Surely now it’s a reasonable time to open a beer?