Is it just me or does Gordon Brown's 'vision' of ten years in power seem like the beginnings of some kind of soft dictatorship? Are we involved in World War III and someone neglected to tell me? I have no recollection of asking for a government of national unity.
More on this later. My brain is somewhat frazzled after coming back from a DANDA meeting (neurologically diverse adults). It was a bit like being in a direct feedback loop or something. Scary, but liberating at the same time.
No work today, so I spent the day doing job applications and such like. Man, the more applications I do, the more I think, "Well who'd wanna hire this fool?"
Recruitment websites all seem to want to send you about ten thousand E-mails once you've signed up. Perhaps they think that you've got enough time on your hands to read them all. Who knows.
Yesterday, I touched on the subject of dyspraxia. The biggest challenge with it has always been having messy handwriting. To your face, people will tell you that they do not judge someone's intelligence by the way they form their letters. The problem is that, most of the time, that is exactly what they do.
During the nightmare that was my two terms of teacher training, I was advised to improve my handwriting. Maybe they thought that I did it on purpose or something. They certainly made me feel like that anyway.
More positively...I can start exercising gain from Friday! Goodbye lathargy, hello healthy knackerness. Huragh!
Just when you think that you haven't had an exciting glass of wine for the longest time... Majestic are doing a spellbinder Rhone wine called "Domaine de la Janasse Terre de Bussière 2005, Vin de Pays de la Principauté d'Orange". It's a steal at £7.49 and a cracking vintage to boot.
This so-called country wine is a real oddity in the grapes department. Merlot, Syrah, Cabernet sauvignon and Grenache are the order of the day here. It's lovely, concentrated stuff that doesn't fit into any part of the French Appellation Controlee system. I mean, growing high quality Merlot in the Rhone. You bumpkins!
Lovely ripe, brambley fruit with a decent balancing acidity matched with real minerality; get thee down to Majestic and buy a few bottles. The branch at Vinopolis (London Bridge) are still doing single bottle sales. Thank the Lord be praised.
Last week was not the best. Each glass of Janesse I had was well earned, let me tell you. How to summarize. Er...me, in Kingston (Surrey), getting completely lost for an hour walking round in a circle while trying to find Sainsburys. Such are the joys of dyspraxia. More on this tomorrow.
My big toe is nearly healed. My side career as slob-swimmer can restart in t-minus twelve days. Never would I think that I'd miss exercise so much.
People have begun contacting me through my entry at Facebook. The dynamic seems to be surprisingly different to Friends Reunited's, "So, what are you doing these days...?" schtick.
The platform seems considerably more altruistic in outlook. I mean, folks actually seem to be genuinely interested in what each other have done with their lives.
Is Facebook just another reflection of how popular the secular dance craze is becoming in the Anglophone world? It's a distinct possibility that suggests an interesting idea. People's messages, or lives, are no longer enough. We, the baying public, demand an insight into the lives and lifestyles of the message bearers. With entry level requirements now so low, celebrity status has never seemed so achievable.
Osama Bin Laden wants to reach the maximum number of infidels through his poorly made home videos. With digital cameras he could easily do a little spread for Hello or OK. The introduction of cave chic would give him a cache amongst the public that money could not buy. Al Jazeera is old news.
He made many people very happy. A good epitaph, I think.
The Daumas Gassac primeur offer arrives. The nights are drawing in. Streets are awash with, apparently, unwanted conkers. Yes people: Autumn walks amongst us.
There is a slight problem this year. Leaves began a fallin' back in July with temperatures and rain to match. We now face the prospect of Autumn being far warmer than summer.
Mas de Daumas Gassac red and white, particularly the red, is surely the best value wine in the world. For £20ish you can a cabernet based Bordeaux style blend that often rivals many wines costing fives times the price. And what of this year's vintage for the red?
2006 was yet another unique year in the Gassac valley. A hot July, cool August and windy September has produced exceptionally low yields of juice in the grapes this year. That means that the wine will be even richer than it usually is. Even in a so-so vintage, the yield is around 35 Hectolitres per Hectare. This is equivalent to the kind of concentration found in many Grand Cru Burgundies.
The mesoclimate of the valley means typically hot Languedoc summer days, but distinctly parky nights. Roasting days of 30 Celsius and nights of a chilly 3 degrees were the order of the day when I worked as a harvester there in 2003. That was after the heat wave, of course.
Although concentrated, Gassac is a wine defined by its elegance and ability to age superbly. You do a lot worse than buying some. I know we will be.
Check out the Daumas Gassac website for more info.
http://www.daumas-gassac.com/
Get well soon Pavarotti.
The new series of Hell's Kitchen began on ITV last night. Marco Pierre White seems much more on the side of the contestants than Gordon Ramsey ever did. Maybe he has less to prove. Maybe he has less of an inferiority complex.
The array of 'vaguely familiars' that make up the celebrity contestants on the show are eclectic, bordering on the bizarre. It comes to something when the biggest showbiz name that a show like this can muster is Jim Davidson. Still, there are a few amusing oddities. Journalist, Rosie Boycott is there. Presumably this is to help pay for her farm.
Remember Kelly LeBrock, star of dubious 80s film such as Woman In Red and Weird Science? The gal is back and is now doing her time in an apron as one of MPW’s heroes. She now looks rather old and rather flabby compared to her 'stealth-self' of twenty-something years ago. It's all comparative though. She looks in better shape than many people I know. The only difference being that they did not used to have a high profile career based on how they looked.
There may be a message hidden in all this. Spend your youth being a slob and then get healthy in middle age. Comparatively, you'll be seen as some kind of messiah.
The PC that I share with Kirsty has suddenly become a war zone. Trojan spyware is evil. People who download it need to be slapped in the face with a wet fish! Oh dear, it was me. Get that mutant turbot away from me. Arghh!
Our woefully inadequate virus protection gizmo turned out to be as much use as a decaf espresso. Yet, the worst thing is not what the spy software can do. It never gets that far. No, the worst thing is the tedious cleaning up after it. My social schedule now seems doomed to revolve around scanning the hard drive.
Never let it be said that I don't give things a fair go (at least not very loudly). A line has to be drawn in the sand though. And what am I talking about? Buying cheap wine from Laithwaites on the basis they provide 'good everyday wines'.
Is it just me, or does the selections of wines that K and I ordered taste like fruity water? I knew something was wrong when I discovered that we were both pouring wine down the sink on a regular basis. It can't be right, can it? Surely the trick is turning water into wine and not the reverse.
My latest mission to order some pigs' trotters from Chadwicks, our fantastic local butcher in Balham, has yet to come to fruition. There is currently a major cash flow problem Chez Me. Don't you just love it when you are randomly not paid your salary for no apparent reason. 'pure joy. Still, there was no guarantee that the trotters would fit me.
That reminds me actually... If you're name was Mr/Mrs/Ms Monue then your house would surely be known as Chez Monue. It also occurred to me yesterday that two pyromaniac cats might get on together like a mouse on fire.
