Keris Stainton's Blog, page 84

15 years…

… we've been married.

These photos were taken on the Santa Cruz boardwalk in 2001 when we were young(ish) and child-free and gadding about California with nary a care in the world (apart from the exchange rate and how quickly our spending money was running out).

I love them.

And I love you too, husband.

Here's to another 15 (at least). And it would be rather ace if we could get back to California sometime…

Meanwhile, over at The Big Zeroes…

I'm writing about reading Mary Oliver's poetry.

Imperial Leather: a question

A couple of weeks ago on Twitter, my lovely friend Stella tweeted that her husband had been reminiscing about Cusson's Imperial Leather: "The first time we got it, it came in a cardboard box and I thought this is the poshest f***in' soap in the world!"

To this day, I still think of it as fancy soap. In fact, the first time I saw it at the in-laws, I pointed it out to David and said, "Have they won the lottery?" Even though I know that it costs less than 50p a bar (cos I just looked it up).

But it's the cardboard box and the little label that makes it seem like posh soap, innit? And I always thought the point of the little label was just to show off its fanciness, even when the box has been thrown away, but Frank Skinner was talking about it on his radio show the other day and he reckons the little label was to stop the soap sticking. To the soap dish, the side of the sink, wherever.

He said you put the soap label side down and it makes it easier to pick up again. He called it one of the greatest design ideas of the 20th Century. And then he said that's why it has a little shaped plinth. Like a kitten heel, he said. "Bugger me," I thought. "I never knew that."

Neither did Emily, his co-presenter, and they talked about it being an Idiotic Eureka Moment, while I wondered whether everyone else knew this. So then I got home and googled Imperial Leather and found that, not only has the label been oversimplified to the point where it no longer looks fancy, but also the plinth has gone. Making me wonder if that was ever the point of the label in the first place.

It's possible I've spent too long thinking about this…

What do you think?

Introducing: my friend, Curly

I've known Curly for a long time now. She's one of those friends I hardly ever see, but it doesn't seem to make much difference. On the rare occasions we do meet, we pick up where we left off and thanks to social media we're in touch an awful lot more than we used to be (in the old, pre-internet days!).

Anyway, thanks to Facebook, I realised that Curly has an extremely exciting and glamorous life… but I didn't know exactly what she does. So I asked her. And now, because it's so interesting, I'm telling you!

So first up… what is it you do exactly?

I'm waiting for my work visa so I can go and work at Josef Chromy winery as the Cellar Door manager in charge of all the wine stuff.

Whilst I'm waiting, I am working on being a sparkling wine genius. At the moment it's very early stages and I'm doing as much visiting of wineries and tasting of sparkling wine as I can to try and put together a sparkling wine map of the globe.

Last year I visited Champagne (twice!) Austria, UK, Napa in California, Bordeaux, South of France, New Zealand and then Tasmania.

Each country and region has its own style, price point, grape varieties and producers so the long term plan is to put them all in one place so consumers can make some sense of what is available and professionals have an educational resource to draw upon.

Wow, that's fabulous. So were you working for someone last year or did you win the lottery? And what does a Cellar Door manager do?

Hahaha! I pretty much had no social life for the last couple of years so I could afford to take a few months of work. Also wine is such an international affair that I now have friends in several of the wine producing corners of the world which means I'm not living out of hotels and it is saving me a fortune.

I was working at Majestic wine as manager of their York branch before I left in November and one of the trips to France was to assist with some wine education separate to my normal job.

A cellar door manager makes sure you get the best experience you can when you visit a winery. It's an opportunity to try wines from a specific producer in situ (www.josefchromy.com.au). Cellar doors vary in size but can range from tasting experience and retail to restaurant and tours of the winery. Some wineries will also have accommodation as well. It's far less glam than it sounds but far more brilliant if wine is your thing! Clean glasses, plenty of stock, chirpy intelligent staff and customers with full wallets and empty glasses is ideal!

I haven't started yet but the cellar door will undertake a real transformation and increase in size and purpose in the next 18 months so it's a really exciting time to get involved. I'm also really looking forward to living in a wine producing region and understanding the wine making calendar and what needs doing when.

I was in the Yarra Valley with a friend who works at Yering Station and I had the opportunity to spend some time with him as he prepares for harvest checking some vineyards for progress and disease and tasting around 60 barrels of Pinot Noir so he could select the barrels he will blend together for a specific wine.

I wouldn't have the opportunity to do that in England so it's been a fantastic experience already and my knowledge has increased enormously in the 2 and a bit months it has been since I left the UK.

This is all fascinating stuff – I'm so impressed! Okay, so how did you first become interested in wine?

The fun way! When I left school i took some time out before university and started working at The Tannin Level in Harrogate. The manager at the time Cal was fantastic and she would give us wine to try without telling us much about it so we could form our own ideas and then she would fill us in on the facts.

The sparkling wine thing is a little different, I was left alone at a wedding when i was around 4 and I went up and down the tables drinking the fizzy wine that was left there whilst people were dancing. The rest as they say…

I stayed at The Tannin Level pretty much all through uni and then went into the cocktail bar side of things which was huge amounts of fun and it wasn't until my late 20s that I got back into the grapes when I began working at Majestic Wine. I studied for my WSET Advanced Certificate and got a distinction and won an award (!) and completed my WSET Diploma with a merit last January. Learning more about sparkling wine is keeping me busy until I learn enough and then sell my internal organs to pay for my Master of Wine http://www.mastersofwine.org/

Fabulous. So do you have any wine words of wisdom for those of us who like a drink, but don't know anything about wine?

Firstly enjoy your wine wisely, you're old enough to drink, you're old enough not to be sick on your own shoes. In real terms I would say if you like wine but want to know a little more or find it easier to buy and try different wines don't be scared of it but realise it's like a lot of other things.

I love an analogy so we'll go for apples to start off with. Go to the shops and you'll find probably 20 different types of apple which isn't very scary, some are sweet some are sharp, they are different colours and can be used for different things, it's the same with wine. Some wine is red and some is white or pink. Some wine is sweet, some is dry and some is fizzy. You don't expect every red apple to taste the same and the same for wine.

Quality wise there is another analogy but I'll give you a tip, if you don't like it at £8 you probably won't like it at £38. Everyone has their own personal taste and if your taste is for big, spicy shiraz then you won't get on too well with a light yet complex Pinot Noir. Another quality tip is try and keep above the £5 mark, in the UK tax and duty is high so not much of your money is going towards the wine at £3.99, at £6-10 you will get so much more wine for your money.

Most of wine tasting is finding your words, the vocabulary of wine. If it says red fruit flavours, think of what red fruits are out there, same with citrus, vegetables and anything else. Everything has a smell and that smell isn't one dimensional and having the words to describe what you are smelling gives you a lot of confidence when drinking wine.

Final tip, ask for help. If they can't or won't help you go somewhere where they can, you'll never look back.

Finally, can you share some highlights of your travels?

There are so many! I think seeing Napa in autumn was stunning, the colours are so vivid and they go all out on the oversize squash/pumpkin decorations there it's fantastic. I had a glass of Dom Perignon (fancy champagne) in a Napa wine bar next the roaring fire on my last night in the States and that was tough to beat.

The biggest thrill from a nerdy wine point of view is to visit the place where the wines have come from and in France that is usually somewhere very stunning such as Ch Pichon Longueville or Taittinger, where I got to try some of their top champagne with Clovis Taittinger. Pleasure you can't measure! Australia is still very early days and everything is pretty exciting so you will have to come back to me on this!

Thanks so much, Curly. I feel exhausted  just reading about it all. Oh… and thirsty. *opens a bottle of red*

You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sarra Manning

I loved Sarra's first adult book, Unsticky, so much that I was desperate to read You Don't Have to Say You Love Me. As soon as it arrived, I settled down with it and fell in love.

Neve's been in love with William since university, but he's spent the last three years in California while she's spent them losing half her body weight. William's coming back and Neve can't wait for him to see her transformation, but she's worried she's too inexperienced for him. She decides she needs to practice being in a relationship and her sister Celia's colleague, Max, seems like just the man for the job. He's not interested in commitment either, so there's no reason they can't just have fun together until William comes home, is there?

I loved everything about this book. Neve is just gorgeous – I can't put it any better than my friend Helen Redfern did in her review: "You aren't just there with Neve, you almost become Neve. It's like peering into her diary and living her life." Fact. I loved Neve's family, her house, the area she lived in, her job. Plus Max is gorgeous too (as is his dog).

It's funny, sexy, wise and around two hundred pages in I started to feel a bit panicky because I didn't want it to end and so started rationing my reading – a chapter of this book, a chapter of something different – I can't remember the last time I did that. But, of course, all good things have to come to an end and eventually I finished it (at midnight, after reading about a hundred pages – I've never been much cop at delayed gratification).

I remember years ago being asked what book I'd like to live in, if I could live in a book. At the time, I didn't know. I do now. This one.

Tangled

Harry and I went to see Tangled on Sunday and I absolutely LOVED it. Harry was a bit cooler, though he wouldn't tell me exactly what he didn't like about it and he did laugh quite a lot (and didn't insist we leave, like when we went to see Tooth Fairy).

I just thought it was gorgeous: gripping, funny, romantic. I loved Rapunzel herself – she's strong and funny and doesn't take any crap – but mainly I got myself a little crush on Flynn Rider. Yes, I know he's a cartoon, but he's just yummy. He reminded me a bit of Nathan Fillion… *drools*

I thought the bit with the lanterns was one of the most gorgeous bits of animation I've ever seen and it was rendered even more magical by a little boy in our row standing up to try and touch one of the 3D ones.

Just lovely. (Yes, I shed a tear or two.)

 

New York spaghetti

Well this is genius.

By Alex Creamer, a student at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, it's an idea for spaghetti packaging based on the Chrysler Building. [via CuddlySheepDesigns]

I love it when people make boring, everyday things into something beautiful or funny and this absolutely fits the bill.

A birthday and an anniversary

Today would have been my dad's 78th birthday.

Harry just saw this picture and said, "Is it Grandad Nincompoop's birthday?" And I said, "Yes. Well, it would have been if he hadn't died." Harry said, "Well. He can celebrate his birthday in Heaven."

I don't believe in Heaven and neither did my dad, but, you know, it's quite nice to think of him up there, riding a Harley (I have no idea whose bike that is in the picture, but it wasn't his) and generally making a nuisance of himself.

Harry's standing next to me now and has just asked, "Are you writing a book about Grandad?"

I said, "Maybe. Do you think that'd be good?"

"Well. He's not going to be able to read it in Heaven… but you could send it to him!"

"How would I do that?"

"You just put it in the post and put 'To Heaven' and the postman will take it straight there. Easy!"

In other news, it's eight years today since I started blogging. Blimey. A LOT has changed in those eight years…

Big Zeroes January update

Read it here.

Birds can't write books

A couple of weeks ago, there was a dead pigeon at the end of our road. I told Harry not to look and, for a few days, he didn't. (He'd shout "Dead bird!" as we came round the corner and then hide his eyes.) It's still there, but it's just sort of flattened feathers now.

Yesterday, on the way home, Harry said, "So… that bird's gone to heaven."

"Well if you believe in heaven," I started.

"I do!" Harry interrupted.

"I know you do. But I don't. And you know the pigeon's still there."

"Where?"

It wasn't gory at all so I showed him, pointing out how all that was left was the body, the bird itself had gone.

"It's like Grandad Nincompoop*…" I started to say. I was going to go on about how a person leaves their body behind, not that Grandad was a pile of flattened feathers at the side of the road, but Harry interrupted me:

"Yes. Grandad Nincompoop turned into something else – an animal or a bird…"

I wondered for a second who'd been telling Harry about reincarnation, but then remembered that when Harry had asked me about heaven, I'd waffled on instead about how when we die we go back into the earth and we all sort of become part of one another. I said "We are all made of stardust" and I even mentioned atoms. (Atoms**!) (I got this information from Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, incidentally.***)

"That's true," I said. "Everyone's part of everyone else. But it's not like Grandad would know it. You're not going to meet a cat one day and it says, 'Hello. I'm Grandad Nincompoop!'"

Harry thought this was hilarious and started suggesting people who might die and then turn up to introduce themselves as cats.

"And if you died, then a cat would say, 'Hello. I'm Middy. I read books!'" He thought a bit more. "Or a bird. And it would say, 'I'm Middy. I write books!'" He laughed. "But birds can't write books!"

Indeed.

* 'Grandad Nincompoop' because he always called the boys nincompoops. But in a nice way.

** I find it odd that my general discourse is probably of a level easily understood by a six-year-old, but whenever I try to actually explain anything to Harry, I soon wander into concepts he hasn't a hope of understanding. I was telling him about something once and I said, "Does that make sense? Do you see what I mean?" and he paused and said, "I have no idea WHAT you're talking about!" I don't know how primary school teachers do it.

*** I was particularly taken with the concept that all of our cells are renewed every seven years, so I am literally an entirely different person than I was seven years ago. I find that fascinating.