Vote for Christmas

Two things from Timed Finals and the BBC news website connected in my head this week. The first was about Sharon Davies - former Big Breakfast presenter in the UK. She 'won' a silver medal at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow behind Petra Sneider from the DDR who has since admitted doping so Sharon, legitimately, should have been the gold medalist. She then took a 9-year break and decided to get back into the swing of things. At the 1989 European Championships she swam faster than she did in 1980! That's a pretty impressive result, even though Dara Torres looks like re-writing the possibility equations.



















Sharon was a very high-maintenance (aka, difficult to deal with) swimmer. When we were going through the Trials for the Europeans we would have a staff meeting each evening to review the qualifiers from that day. The first thing on the agenda each evening was, 'Has 'she' qualified?' and 'Who is going to deal with her?' The night she qualified there was an aura of fear around the table. 'Give her to me,' I said, 'She's fine.' And she was; the most skilled and professional swimmer I had ever encountered; I count her as a friend and I know she's been though some pretty harrowing times. I think she does her 'image' no good at all with the pin-up photos but I guess she knows what she's doing as she's survived in the pretty hard world of media exposure.

So, the two things; first an item saying Sharon had signed up as a turkey! I think Bernard Matthews' company and product have come under some criticism from Gordon Ramsey on 'The F-Word' and Sharon has to make them look all fluffy, cosy and tasty again. Bootiful.










... and then another item saying a turkey had used bad language in Parliament. Well, that's what I thought it said and I connected the two stories and thought Sharon had transmogrified, donned her team mascot uniform and toddled off to Westminister to let rip with her opinion in words which offended the Right Honorable members.

Hilary eat your heart out.

Co-in-ki-dinks

How about this?

Yesterday I met a couple of colleagues from work and took them down to Rancho Relaxo. (PLEASE help me with another name for it!). They were suitably impressed but differed from my assessment of 'million dollar views' as they amended it to 'multi-million dollar views.'

After that we 'repaired' (what is it with upper-class, mid-20th Century English idioms?) to Fernside to feed the lambs as one of the work-colleagues (The Blonde described in the ... and food! blog much earlier) had her 9-year old (very calm and 'collected') and two-and-a-half year old ('total train-wreck') with her.


So, happy photos on the 'Lothlorien' Lake and bridge in the Fernside grounds and all was good.


Then they drove back to Wellington and I joined Bill and Toni in visiting a couple of friends in Martinborough. He's a winemaker and she is a terrific cook; they have just finished a new house where they plan to have paying guests. I was interested in the building material they'd used, Hebel, which is an aerated, lightweight concrete, so lots of options and lots of insulation. Their interior design, style and 'taste' is spot-on so I invited Lois to be my interior decoration advisor. Fortunately she agreed and more fortunately she will do it for fun.

Stephen is looking at putting together a definitive collection of malt whiskies and asked me to do some research for him. We chatted over a stunning Chardonnay then he opened a bottle of Michel Couvreur malt which is 'produced in Burgundy! WHAT is that about? Scotch Malt whisky produced in France?

It's a fascinating story but there's a twist; the first bottle we opened (yes, the first!) was labeled 'Meldrum House, Old Meldrum'. All the web reviews I've looked at say Couvreur does not reveal the origin of his whisky on his bottles, 'distillery not identified', but these bottles were very clear; Old Meldrum. Now there's only one distillery in the village so it's a no-brainer. Old Meldrum (although Google prefers Oldmeldrum) is the small village (pop. ~ 2,000) about 15 miles NW of Aberdeen, Scotland where your great, great, grandfather on my side of the family was the 'Cooper', ie, he constructed the barrels to hold the maturing whisky, at the Glen Garioch distillery. So that's co-in-ki-dink number one.

Second one
At Fernside Bill and Toni's place, I have two bottles of Glen Garioch (pronounced Glen Geerey). Top of my head, I can't remember the age but they are 'special stuff', aged and numbered bottles and are reserved for Tom and Elliot as 'family heirlooms - didn't think Hannah would be a whisky connoisseur. They are stored in a cabinet owned by the originator of Dry River Wines, Neil McCallum, (remember DR from last week's post?), so far, so good. But here's the next co-in-ki-dink; Neil used to employ an apprentice winemaker called Andrew Smith. Andrew is Hammy's youngest son and your Mum used to baby-sit him! He then moved to California and is doing pretty OK for himself - at the recent dinner hosted by George 'Dubyah' for The Queen (not the real one, Helen Mirren, but the one who lives in Buck House) they drank DuMol Chardonnay 2004 Isobel named for Kirsty Isobel Smith; that's a pretty 'out there' CV.

Third one
Next, we returned to Fernside and ate the usual glorious meal, produced by Toni and accompanied by the usual adequate amounts of wine. During the meal Bill had a call from a friend who used to be the Mayor of Wellington and has a weekend cottage in Martinborough (a few miles from Fernside and Rancho Relaxo); remember the Rolling Stones concert last year (the best concert I've EVER attended)? Well, the road into the stadium is named after her, 'Fran Wilde Way'; that's not a bad CV either. She was in Wellington and had left something in the Martinborough house which she needed. So we broke into the house (with precise instructions from Fran) and liberated the said item which I then drove to Wellington this morning. As I was getting near to town I phoned Fran to get directions. When she gave me them I drove straight to her place, knocked on the door and, pointing to the nearest high-rise block, said, 'See the penthouse up there? that's my place!' I couldn't believe I could literally drop something on their pad from my pad!

Small world; New Zealand is a village.

Look Up To The Skies And See ...

There's hope yet for all us failed academics. Brian May has completed his PhD thesis and handed it in ... 36 years after abandoning it!

The astronomy thesis is entitled 'Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud' which I guess explains all those 'soaring' guitar chords (sorry for that).

Maybe I should unearth all my half-finished jottings and submit a 'Mister Clive's Greatest Hits' compilation.

'Just Like That.'

I picked up the 'new' writstwatch yesterday in Auckland. Part of the deal was a choice between a Cartier cleaning kit or $100 worth of DVD's (the guy works for the biggest DVD distributer in NZ). So I went with the DVD's - 'Ocean's 11', '12' and '13', Scorsese's Dylan Pic, 'No Direction Home', 'Dead Gorgeous' and, .. dah-dah, 'The Best of Tommy Cooper'.

Of course, it was a no-brainer chosing which to watch but first I had to unravel the mystery of DVD Regions on my computer. These things really do my head in. Why do they have Regions? I've heard all the rationalisation but it doesn't cut it for me. Anyway my computer has now reached it flip-flop limit and is locked at zone 4; I'll have to put the stand-alone player to zone 1 which will lock it also.

The TC DVD runs for 48 minutes and I was crying after 1 minute and 35 seconds as was Michael Parkinson who was interviewing him. 'Spoon, jahr; jahr, spoon.' 'I went to the doctor's today. I said, "Doctor, it hurts when I do this." He said, "Don't do that."'

How can anyone have an audience crying with laughter by simply standing perfectly still?

Dry River: Dry Run!

So, this morning I met Cunning Clint (the architect, but be careful how you say the phrase) at the building site to peg the proposed building area out. We’re going to have to move the garage back to where I’d originally suggested it so you'll turn into the hillside as you approach the top of the driveway.

Anyway then CC and I drove to Martinborough to have a look at another house he’d designed and I then I tried to find Dry River Wines to deliver my Spring Release order.

Dry River Wines are one of the world's most renowned 'boutique' vineyards and I managed to get on their mailing list about six months ago after a year or so of waiting. I missed out on some good bottles last time they mailed me because I was out of town and didn’t get the order in soon enough. Only non-NZ people are allowed to fax orders in and no-one is allowed to order online. It's all done by snailmail. I think they'll have to change but I understand their reasoning, for instance, in the Spring Release some of the varieties are restricted to 100 bottles. Those will go, like, 'zap!' so they have to control and balance the ordering process.

As I was meeting Cunning Clint it sounded like a good idea to drive to Martinborough and hand-deliver the wine order. We (CC and CR) first drove to look at a house he'd designed so I could get a feel for 'value' and then I went in search of Dry River. Could I find the damned vineyard? Could I as hell as like! I found Dry River Rd and drove up it past a gazillion other vineyards but I didn’t see Dry River! At the very end of Dry River Rd is Blue Rock Rd or something like that, so a nice farmer (who had never heard of Dry River Wines!) suggested I keep going in the same direction as Blue Rock Rd forms a loop back to the road out of Martinborough. Off I went, very conscious of my fuel gauge being at blue rock bottom. Bloody hell, I was right in the depths of Middle Earth, Trolls learing out from behind Ents and giant spiders lurking everywhere. I never found the vineyard and I took so long finding the way back to Martinborough (and nearly totalled the crap 'loaner' car on the gravel road) that I had then to hare it over the Rimutakas for golf at 2pm. I was going to drop in to see how Toni was fairing with her baby imminent in two weeks but I was late.

And I lost the golf!