Wining

Ordinarily, I am quite curiously disciplined about drinking: I start at five, and drink half a bottle of wine before the end of my working day. Then I stick the cork in, save the rest for tomorrow, go downstairs and start dinner.

Today, there are two things that might disrupt that steady approach.

One is the irritating govt propaganda, whereby I am apparently poisoning myself at a great rate of knots; apparently I should have two days off a week, and no more than three or four units on any of the other days, and...

Three or four units? Is one glass of wine. One glass. I'm sorry, but as propaganda goes that's just counterproductive. Why the hell would I listen to that? (The one time I ever counted my units for a week, just out of curiosity, I quit when I was already at twice the recommended total and the week wasn't over and I hadn't been drunk once. If their maximum is below my minimum, I'm just not going to listen, y'know?)

So there's that. I want to drink in an act of simple defiance.

Also, there's the copy-edit.

My plan is to drink until that's done, to see me through it; and then to keep on drinking.

The only obstacle to this plan is Barry, who has settled into my lap like molten lead. As soon as he deigns to move, I'm opening a bottle.

Whoops

Getting quite stroppy now. Leaving crisp little notes in the margins. Ah, me. And I've barely begun the drinking...

I want a snack now. Or maybe a shrubbery. Ni!

Sweet and sour

I finished the copy-edit. Rejoice, he said, in a voice like Eeyore.

Yeah, I know. We've been here before. You hit the end of something endless, and suddenly run out of road; it's all crash.

As witness, I didn't even finish my bottle of wine. Didn't want to. Work done, suddenly drinking alone loses its point. I cooked dinner, and ate, and watched a little TV but I seem to have lost my taste for that too; so I came up and noodled on the internet, and had a bath, and pretty soon now I'm going to bed.

But in the meantime, I have been angsting thinking about stuff, and the removal of stuff. One of the many many things I need not to be taking to California with me is a box of preserving-jars: so obviously I should preserve some things, and give them to my friends to make them love me remember me by. And it is Seville season, and so I was thinking about marmalade (tho' they are rather large jars, but hey); and I happened to mention this to Karen and she said, "No, no! You must give me all the marmalade! All of it!!"

So then I was thinking about pickles and chutneys and so forth (I made a lime pickle, eg, that I am seriously proud of); and this evening my noodling took me to certain Vietnamese and wokkery sites, and - here's a question that I seriously need an answer to, if I am to up from these shores to those: why do Americans call it canning, when they put food into jars? To us it's pickling or preserving, it's named for the process not the container - but even in the US, aren't glass containers called jars? To me, cans are made of tin, and canning happens in factories. I went to a sardine-canning factory once, when I was a child. That was a fun day out. (Well, it kind of was, actually; it was in Vigo, in Spain. But even so. Hey, kids, let's take you to a fish factory...)

Anyway. I actually have a host of chutneys to give away anyway, for I cannot take them with me; but if anybody wants anything pickled before I leave, speak up. Will trade jars of food for empty cardboard boxes...