Thumbs Up!

This is what happens when you stop boozing. You lose all your points of reference. You're operating in a strange demi-monde, peopled by strangers, different perspectives and ways of doing things. There I was, slicing a raw fennel with my latest acquisition from the market, a kitchen utensil with quite the sharpest blade in the Western hemisphere. One moment I was happily slicing, the next I was pulling the top of my thumb off the blade. Blood every-sodding-where. Showing unusual presence of mind, I stuck my thumb in my mouth and started sucking and then hunted for a piece of string (Mrs Combo was at work). No string so I cut the strap off the camera and tied that tight around the digit as a make-do tourniquet. Half a kitchen roll later Mrs C pitched up and took me to A&E. Such is my accident-prone nature that I am virtually on first name terms with the doctors and nurses. Three stitches and home. That'll learn me.

A Royal Lunching

Bit of a lapse yesterday at a lunch with friends in a very old house in the country (All paintings on the ceilings, silver candelabra, dusty stuff like that. Where's the sodding 46" plasma I was wondering). The main course was wild boar cooked in decent Barbera. This was preceded, of course, by a vast selection of antipasti, one of which was this huge and beautifully-presented jar of stuffed chili peppers. Not like the Combo version, stuffed with anchovies, but stuffed with tuna. They were sensational. Then a risotto with wild mushrooms. Then the wild piggy. Burp. I drank a couple of glasses of white and then a few* reds, reasoning that it would have been extremely rude to my host who had spent two days preparing the boar not to have helped it down with some Chianti, Barbera and finally some Barbaresco. I was then advised to drink a very old barrel-aged rum as a digestivo, which I did. God knows why, I don't even like bloody rum. Result was a thumping headache later on in the evening. Feeling a tad remorseful I have weighed back in with the veg and water today - and of course the milk thistle. Oh Ron, that it should have come to this!

* More than a few actually.

Italian Pikey

Spotted in the local town this weekend. And the Ape (translation bee, as in busy, geddit?) is probably one of the biggest nails of its type I've seen. But it still goes about its work, tooling around the rubbish bins of the town, its horribly-inbred owner scavenging for scrap.

Pile it High!

Well, how could I say no? I have always been a disciple of the Kingsley Amis School of Boozing, which invariably lauded quantity over quality. This remarkable offer of 1.5 litres of Tetrapaked white wine for 79c (around .66p at today's exchange rate) at a local Lidl, plumbed happy new depths in my unremitting quest for rank bevy.
This is the cheapest wine I have ever come across, and believe me I have scoured northern Italy. Goodness knows what Vinogirl will have to say about this. The packaging gives away as little information as possible, as you might imagine. Its 11%, its Italian and packaged near Verona.
I reckon this is the genuine EU wine lake number that you lot have massively subsidised with your taxes, so thank you all very much. It is clearly undrinkable, although maybe after the seventh or eighth plastic beaker you're probably past caring if you're with your horribly-stained mates on the park bench. Which is where I will be in February, knocking this back, when the dark clouds of abstention have lifted and I am back in the sunlit uplands, squeaking and dribbling with childish joy.

Exhortations for a Better Life

Whilst waiting my turn at the spa and contemplating my Condition I enjoyed looking at some of the framed posters on the wall which must have been there for about 30-odd years. The one above is telling people not to wear their clothing too tight as we are all crawling with fungal growths....
....get yourself a hobby.......
....keep in shape...........
...and, strangely for Italy, Drink in Moderation. Quite frankly, if Drinking Moderately leaves you looking like the bloke above, I'd prefer to Drink Immoderately, thank you very much. Which of course I can't for the moment, chiz chiz.

Misery Compounded

Irreplaceable.

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?