Happy Christmas

See you in 2016 in the mean time have a very happy time over Christmas. Love Syb

Mike's memories - Wine making Saudi style

As they say Christmas is coming and I was contemplating various past Christmases which lead me to think of booze and so my thoughts went on to drinking in the UK expatriate community in Saudi Arabia. Funny how the mind wanders over to the less tasty moments of our lives, at least if you have ever tasted the stuff we used to brew out there you will know what I mean.

If you were of the patient sort of expatriate you would acquire a five gallon plastic container and a length of plastic gas pipe, then put I think it was about five pounds of sugar in the container fill it with as many bottles of grape juice as you could conveniently get in followed by a packet of yeast arrange the gas pipe so it was in a leak proof hole through the cap of the container. Coil the gas pipe so it formed a loop drop a little water in to form a seal so that gases could escape but no air could enter. If you really were patient sort you would leave it for six months or so until it had stopped breathing, but if you were normal you would kill the fermentation process in a couple of weeks and drink it. You could make a reasonable sherry with sultans and in fact it was a process ripe for experimentation if you had the stomach for it.

If you were prudent you would put five gallons down every month and drink somebody else’s for the first six.

Mike's memories - Mum and cricket

My mother was greatly influenced by Victorian standards and morals and it was these virtues that were drilled into me from an early age. As part of this regime I was taught and had to learn by heart Kipling’s “If” and another poem that she told me her father had written. He had died when I was about six so I never really had the opportunity to ask him, as I remember him he was a pretty insular type anyway. I have no idea if it had a title but here it is my mother’s mantra for raising her boy.

Life is a test, give of your best,

Fight with your back to the wall,

Never say die, laugh and don’t cry,

Get up again if you fall,

Help where you can woman or man,

Stranger, lame dog or friend

Don’t stop to whine, never repine,

The longest lane turns in the end,

Hang on to that, keep a straight bat,

Grin if you’re bowled all the same,

Smile and stick it, remember it’s cricket,

Whatever you do play the game.

For my American readers cricket is an English game played with eleven a side, a bat and a ball over five days, vaguely like base ball but much, much longer!