| Kick the Bottle |
| Take your last empty bottle, turn it upside down and dissolve an effervescent vitamin C tablet in the kick, then down the bracing potion in a single gulp. As doubting a Thomas as you may be in all other respects, this act will be balm to your soul. It's a modest start, but as you can see, there is definitely more between heaven and earth. What's so funny, though, is that as soon as you've got used to it, you would call it "knowledge" rather than "belief". Hopefully you won't have missed the fact that to date, all hard-fought insights except for the one in the bath tub have been superseded by alternative notions, so why should it be any different in the future? It is therefore a sign of astuteness that the void underneath the wine bottle, which in the absence of profounder thought we could refer to as daylight robbery as it contains air rather than wine, has been dubbed the "kick". |
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It is thanks to the specifically human weakness of overindulging in wine during the Christmas season that I owe this contribution to the cleansing atmosphere that one simply cannot get away from during this time of the year. The phrase "fine wine" brings a blush to every cheek, whereas the word "vinegar" causes the entire muscular system from the tip of the ears to the clavicles to contract. Say wine while thinking vinegar and that's the Christmas spirit out of the window right there.
My contribution presumes the serving of excellent wine. This is a far from obvious thing, as many years of experience have taught that unless one applies a system of stringent selection, three quarters of all wine consumed will turn out to have been tart. Three cheers then for that peculiar human faculty of "imagination": no sooner are the nativity scenes put out or all wine tastes wonderful, until after Twelfth Night. I hesitate to declare this phenomenon to be applicable to my contribution, which due to mediocrity and lack of time has had to forego the usual scientific substantiation, but I have a nagging feeling, and nagging feelings are the cradle of all science, are they not? There are wines that leave a spicy, sultry perfume in the empty glass which grows stronger with every glass consumed. I have a hunch these must be wines that were left to age in wooden barrels. Undrinkable wines seldom display this attribute - which implies that the state of euphoria to be achieved by consuming several glasses of excellent wine has a disproportionate effect on the perception of the perfume which the wine leaves in the empty glass. There is the inevitable moment where the sense of smell supplants the actual drinking, where the high is vanquished by the scent - which can be a highly gratifying experience in more than one sense, depending on the degree to which one remains conscious. In all modesty, this strikes me as an uplifting as well as sensible example of seasonal goodwill. |