Varieties of piffle

 

Peter and I went out to dinner tonight.  Just because.  To the Bard and Orpharion which tends to be our default.  And they were out of half bottles of champagne and weren’t offering it by the glass.*  We didn’t quite get up and stamp out the door but we thought about it.  Peter, in best loyal-husband mode, suggested this drastic course of action.  We could go back to the Bulgy Loaf, which was our great find a fortnight ago when the electricity went phut at Peter’s end of town:  they had teeny-weeny individual bottles of Freixenet** available, thank you very much, and they’re probably not heaving on a Monday evening in early March.  But one doesn’t really want to burn one’s bridges too spectacularly in a small town***.  So we stayed.  There may have been muttering.

And then I thought, well, okay, I have a minor thing for killer dessert wines—the kind you might mistake for treacle if you weren’t paying close attention, till the alcohol aftershock makes your hair stand on end and your socks pop off†—I’ll have a glass of dessert wine with my brownie.  THEY DON’T DO DESSERT WINE BY THE GLASS EITHER.

But at least the brownie was serious.

 

It’s not a totally weird saddo thing to take a photo of a magnificent brownie is it? No, no I’m sure it isn’t.

. . . And yes, we’d been playing bridge, where Peter fiddles the cards first so we have (a) more fun (b) a better Teaching Experience and I actually sort of almost understood what was happening some of the time.  I can’t decide if this is a good thing or not.

So we came home and Peter got one of our emergency quarter bottles of champagne out of the cupboard and put it in the freezer for twenty minutes AND I’M DRINKING IT NOW.

 * * *

*Their pathetically feeble excuse is that they’d had a wedding which had drunk it all.  A wedding that drank all the HALF BOTTLES?  What kind of a cheap cheezy wedding is that?  With only three people at the reception and two of them are teetotallers?^  We’ll have more in on Wednesday, said the lightly sweating waiter.  WEDNESDAY?  WHAT GOOD IS WEDNESDAY?  IT’S MONDAY AND I WANT CHAMPAGNE.^^

. . . and maybe the Bulgy Loaf had a wedding last week too where teetotalism was rampant and they’re all out of little bottles too.

^ I mean, not cheap.  Half bottles are ridiculously expensive per glass—you only do it because You.  Must.  Have.  Champagne and there’s only one of you, or maybe two, you’re both nearly teetotallers and one of you doesn’t like champagne much.+

+ There’s no accounting.  Maybe it’s that Y chromosome.

^^ Peter, who can sometimes be noble beyond all measure+, offered to buy a REAL bottle of champagne.  Even I quailed at the magnificence of this sacrifice.++

+ Which helps to balance out the times THAT HE’S SPILT MARMALADE IN THE SILVERWARE DRAWER AGAIN AND I WANT TO KILL HIM.

++ I’ll try to remember this moment the next time he spills marmalade in the silverware drawer.  Or unloads the dishwasher and puts everything tidily away having not run it first.  AAAAAAUUUUUGH.

** I’ve said this before, haven’t I?  That Freixenet has come a long way in the last thirty years or so?  There was a time when I wouldn’t drink it because it was nasty.  It’s still not the Widow, but it doesn’t cost like the Widow either.

. . . I was just looking it up on line so I could spell it correctly and . . . you have to be of legal drinking age in the country you’re in to look at their site?  What?  Why?  Is looking at virtual bottles of B-list fizz really going to tip you over the edge into picking the lock on your parents’ liquor cabinet and getting pootered on Harvey’s?^  I did not, in fact, penetrate past the are you of legal drinking age click here pop up because the site background is all dark and creepy and there is ominous icky music like one of those computer games where stuff starts jumping out at you before I’ve got my finger off the ‘start’ button and I never live long enough to get out of the first level.

^ I feel that a hangover from Harvey’s Bristol Cream would probably cure you of drinking alcohol for life, but maybe that’s just me.

*** Besides, one possibly has a habit of doing it inadvertently and had better mind one’s ps and qs when one notices before it’s too late that they’re milling around in a dangerous manner^ and really need minding.^^

^ like bull terrier puppies.  All smiles and little evil eyes . . . and remarkably fast on those little short legs.

^^ Sit!  Sit!  That’s not sitting!+

+  I’m not sure what it is, but it’s not sitting.

† In my early drinking days I’ve even been known to enjoy a glass of Harvey’s.  But I wouldn’t want to make a habit of it.