Fellow Wine Lovers,
The craziness just goes on and on doesn’t it? It’s so exhausting trying to keep up that we thought we’d try and keep a diary.
Monday found us wondering what Elon Musk would do with Twitter. Clearly he didn’t want too many of the staff and they’ve been exiting stage left with a cardboard box and a coffee mug all week. So far we’ve only heard that he may charge those with a blue tick around $8 for the privilege. We think we’d rather have a pint or a Spotify subscription if we’re honest. Also Guy Fawkes set off again for Parliament, it’s a long way when your legs are made of old tights and newspaper!
Tuesday greeted us with the news that Matt Hancock will be in the Jungle for I’m a Celebrity… Like Mad Nads before him, he has lost the Tory whip for going. It seems a bit strange that he loses the whip for a few days away, yet the blond scarecrow has kept his despite spending most of the year on holiday, before heading to Cop27 and then Singapore as a keynote speaker at a conference on blockchain. What service is he providing to the overly tolerant people of Uxbridge? Does he even know where it is?
We might have to watch I’m a Celebrity though, just to see the Honourable Member from Suffolk gets to be in the Bush Tucker Trials, his constituents seem keen on him eating grubs.
Tuesday was also marked by giant silver balls the size of a transit van blowing down Tottenham Court Road after they were separated from an installation! It looked like an update to The Prisoner!
Wednesday was a veritable treasure trove. We learnt that the government has been ‘wargaming’ a plan in case of seven day blackouts this winter. We also learned from the National Grid that wind has generated 51% of GB electricity for the first time, that’s over 20 Giga Watts!
We learnt that Rishi Sunak is as keen on U-turns as everyone that went before him. He has changed his mind about COP27, quite possibly shamed into it when the blond scarecrow said he would be attending and that King Charles was having a reception for 200 NGO’s beforehand. Also Rishi has said he’ll ditch key leadership campaign pledges. So, if we remember correctly, he resigned because he had fundamental economic differences with Johnson, then he set out his own pledges during the leadership campaign, then becoming PM he said he’ll deliver the 2019 manifesto and now he says that its ‘not the right time’ for any of this. Did we miss anything?
We also learned, and this is the exciting one, that true north, magnetic north and grid north will all combine at a single point in Great Britain this week for the first time in history. The village of Langton Matravers west of Swanage is preparing itself! The three norths will travel together slowly up the country (Poole for Christmas!) for around three and a half years, eventually leaving our landmass at Fraserburgh around July 2026. More details over at the Ordnance Survey website.
Rolling into Thursday we learned the monetary policy committee of the Bank of England would be increasing interest rates to 3%. We also learned that the same monetary policy committee thinks that the UK is already in recession and they expect it to be the longest in history, without taking account of the coming austerity in the 17th November budget. Which kind of makes the rate rise a bit questionable in my view.
Thursday also brought us a step too far in cancel culture. It seems that Mars will be removing Bounty from packs of Celebrations this year. Whilst it could, of course, be just a ruse to get us all talking about their product, it could also be turning a selection of us into Bounty Hunters. Perhaps like grown up Milky Bar kids!
In wine news, we heard that Spanish police are looking for masked thieves who stole 132 bottles of wine worth £172,000 from Coque, a two-star Michelin restaurant in Madrid. They broke into the upmarket Coque restaurant in the early hours of Sunday morning via a chemist’s next door, which closed last month. Detectives believe the collection, said to be ‘one of the best in Spain’, was stolen by criminals who could have posed as customers in recent days.
Which brings us to today and given the current ubiquity of U-Turns (even Vlad the Invader with grain shipments) we wished we’d trademarked it!
Time for a glass of something suitable…
The white will be Dog Point Chardonnay 2018 (£27.99) from Marlborough in New Zealand. Doug and Ivan were part of the pioneering team along with Kevin Judd of Greywacke who set up Cloudy Bay in 1984. This is a wonderful white and it’s far too long since we opened one.
Red we’ll stay down under and open Flametree Shiraz 2017 (£18.99) from Margaret River in Western Australia this seems just the ticket for bonfire night.
That’s it from us, we’ll be hopping in the Chinook to Balham later!