An Oyster Frenzy

A friend from France has brought me some oysters, said Mauri on the telephone, why don't you come around and we'll have a chat about Vinitaly and how you can help me sell my wines in Inghilterra. I went round like a shot. I thought there might be a dozen oysters in the frame but the Froggie had bought a barrel full. Now I am not one for original thoughts but one of the few I have had is that the Mediterranean is, frankly, a filthy, stinking, open sewer. I mean, it is effectively the repository for all the, er, waste products spewed out by (clockwise) Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey etc etc. My host country chucks whatever it can get away with into the Med, so just imagine all those charming discharges from some of the north African countries. And the water never changes, it just sort of swills around as if in a gentle pre-wash cycle. Hardly any tides either (interestingly, Italian school children can't quite understand High Tides and Low Tides, just as they cannot understand how Britain can exist without identity cards, but that's for another post). Anyway, these oysters were from the Cote d'Azur and if the Ron Combo School of Maritime Hygiene were to be correct I should still be in hospital. However, they were quite excellent. We knocked 'em off with a good bottle of Prosecco, an extremely disappointing magnum of NV Laurent Perrier and a superb De Ferrari fizzer from Trento. My zinc levels went through the roof. Yum yum.

Going to Hell

Without wishing to turn this into a medical journal, I am currently undergoing a course of inhalation treatments at the spa. Our local town is famous for its foul, hot, sulphurous waters which bubble up in lots of different places. The water is said to be very good, if drunk, for one's digestion, but it is also used to create steam which is dispensed to those with respiratory or sinus problems. I get the latter in the winter so I booked my series of sessions. The place is very, um, Germanic and 1960s, acres of white tiling, spotlessly clean, few decorations and staffed by frau-like female attendants* who brook no buggering around. The poor shot above, taken at great personal risk, gives a glimpse of one of the row of sinks where the inhalers sit, faced by a slightly vulgar nozzle out of which the steam jets. The view upon entering, particularly when it is full, is terrifying, with rows of old bleeders sitting rigid at their sinks, the women in hairnets, eyes tightly shut, their mouths wide-open in a ghastly blow-up doll rictus as they take the steam orally. Factor in the constant hissing, the clouds of steam and the background aroma of sulphur and it's a sort of healthy hell.
I always leave feeling a little light-headed after all that sulphury steam and on the first flight of stairs on the way out invariably miss my footing and nearly twist my ankle when confronted with the above.

*Oh nursey, nursey, I've been naughty, haven't I nursey?

Chopper Action!

The state electricity company has been changing some bits on a - what is the collective noun for pylons? - a march of serious pylons that pass close by Casa Combo. This involved the use of a helicopter and a lot of noise and blokes swinging around from the top of said pylons on impossibly slim ropes without a care in the world. I got the willies just looking at them. Interestingly, I spoke to some of the climbing gang after they had finished this section and they all have the thickest accents from the Alto Adige/Trentino region.....where the Dolomites are! Climbing must be in their DNA.
Apologies for not having written for a while about drinking. To be honest I have been pouring so much down my fat chops lately that even I feel embarassed at my levels of consumption. Last Wednesday - just as a random example - I had two small 33cl bottles of Europiss at around 5pm; at six I fixed a Martini Rosso for Mrs Combo and but I customised mine with a decent slug of Beefeater, just to give it some backbone. With dinner I drank a bottle of Cabernet Franc, minus one glass for the good lady wife, bless 'er; after she had tootled off to bed I slunk down to the cellar and as quietly as possible drew off a couple of big (alright, huge) glasses of Barbera d'Asti from my excellent bag in box selection. I rounded off this tranquil evening with two sodding great grappas. The only possible chink of hope for me is that the spirits I drink are clear; never really been one for whisky or brandy. And I hardly ever drink at lunchtime, honest. But I'm clutching at straws, aren't I?

A quiet night out

Please come around for some supper they said. But it's Friday tomorrow, I replied weakly, and I'm teaching at eight o'clock and I don't finish until one. Oh, don't be such a poof, they said, we're only cooking a plate of Milanese (delicate slices of beef, coated in breadcrumbs, and then fried in good oil), there's a plate of tomato salad and that's it, you'll be home by ten o'clock. Needless to say, at half past midnight we were bellowing out "Canto, canto, canto" and "Rido, rido, rido" and I was begging Mrs Combo for just five essential minutes of grace so I could drink some more Marzemino (an obscure red from Trentino and, in my opinion, the more obscure it remains the better). The bloke in the dodgy glasses bailed out early, as you might imagine.