It exists therefore it stays

Things we cannot bear to throw away always have a story attached. And the story may reveal what sort of person we are.

Here’s a can of Red Bull energy drink which was bought in France. Its slogans have more charm than if they were in English: Formule Taurine (The Bullish Recipe or, more digestibly, The Bullish “Way”) and Vivifie le corps et l’esprit (hardly needs translating). The sell-by date is July 7 2011.

Why, you will ask it, did I buy it? Well, the journey from our part of England (confusingly called The Welsh Marches) to our regular French holiday area (Languedoc) is a long one and I share the driving with younger daughter, Occasional Speeder. The French autoroutes warn about driving when tired and we decided to test a collection of energy drinks prophylactically. Excellent idea. That is, until we started tasting and quickly decided a vacuum flask of black coffee would be preferable. I don’t think we got as far as the Red Bull.

Why don’t I throw it away? Well, it’s full and still unopened. Also it was brewed in Austria and foreign stuff often costs an arm and a leg in France; I can’t bear the waste.

But nor can I handily store it. Non-alcoholic drinks (for guests, of course) are kept in the garage on racking surmounted by free-standing pyramids of cans. Red Bull’s can is narrow and would slip through the racking slots. It is also too long to form a stable element in one of the pyramids.

One may add liquor to an energy drink which seems like a double whammy: diluting the booze and undermining the energy drink’s health claims.

I can’t give it away because of the sell-by date. So it presently acts as a paperweight. Time passes.

A short break from gardens

Yesterday music was the concern of our guests – Relucent Reader and his missus. When we dropped them at their hotel on the outskirts of Cheltenham (under the shadow of GCHQ) at 8.30 pm they were due to freshen up and take a taxi to a concert starting at 9.30 pm. A day or two earlier in their impossibly tight schedule they’d managed to squeeze in some Bach at St Martin-in-The-Fields (north-eastern corner of Trafalgar Square, London)

The RRs from Virginia, USA, were touring grand English gardens and we picked them up from Blenheim (Nearly a Snafu; the adjacent town of Woodstock has TWO gates to the Blenheim estate.) I had grandiose plans which included a tour of mid-Wales but geography and a drum-beat deadline reduced this to a trot round Hereford Cathedral (the chained library – both RRs are librarians – and Mappa Mundi were closed) followed by tea chez da Ponte, a meal few of our acquaintances, or we ourselves, have experienced.

RR has a highly individual blogging voice which is heard all too rarely, knows about technology, books and much more, and years ago noticed Works Well via a chance reference to the American composer Charles Ives. In the end, I suppose, it was conversation that mattered; raising our voices over that of the satnav lady he and I set the world to rights as did Mrs RR and Mrs LdP behind us.

The bottle was a kind memento of their visit and a revelation that Virginia has gone in for viticulture. The grape, petit verdot, is a late ripener in Europe and tends to be added in small amounts for extra tannin, colour and flavour,  especially with cab sauv. However it ripens more reliably in the New World and emerges as a wine in its own right.