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!

Mike's memories - Gentlemen beware!

Whilst we’re on the subject of poetry I thought might add a couple now and next week. Today’s is a poem that I learnt along the way without knowing where it came from but I seem to have known it from a different age perhaps it doesn’t apply any more but I haven’t had the opportunity to find out for some time. Here it is:-

Time was when poets would bewail

The false of all female hearts,

But now it is a different tale

The fault has spread to other parts,

And for a man who tries conclusions,

Finds he suffers sad delusions,

The figure he thought so stunning,

Is owed to Mr. Dunlop’s cunning,

A plague upon the lofty dome,

That first invented latex foam.

Elegy in a church yard again

There is a famous poem called if my memory serves me well 

“Elegy in a Church Yard” written by Grey in Stoke Poges church 

yard, the picture is of that place. The first verse goes something like this:-

The church bell tolls the knell of parting day,

A line of cows winds slowly o’re the lea,

The plowman plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

It was brought up to date in Punch magazine:-

The church bell tolls the knell of parting day,

A line of cars winds slowly of the lea,

Pedestrians plod their weary way.

And leave this world quite unexpectedly.

How things change!!

A pig poem for you

I came across an old Irish poem the other day which as I’m short of time this week I thought I’d share with you, here it is:-

A year ago September,

A day I well remember,

I was walking up and down in pride,

When my legs began to flutter,

And I fell down in the gutter,

And a pig came up and lay down by my side,

As I lay there in the gutter,

Thinking things I couldn’t utter,

I heard a passing lady say,

“You can tell a man who boozes

By the company he chooses,

And with that the pig got up and slowly walked away.

Enjoy catch you next week.

Mike's memories - Young and foolish

At the time we were young and foolish with a great desire to elevate ourselves to a higher social level, later we were to learn just how foolish we were, it took about forty years. However in those early days we joined a very posh country club. I think the entry fee was about three week’s wages and it catapulted into a local society we could not really keep pace with financially. But the main core of the members knew I was a corporal in the RAF and treated Syb and I with kindness and understanding. We were only allowed to buy one round of drinks a night. Naturally the members apart from us were well heeled members of the local set and had no concept of how low a corporal’s wages really were. So a round of drinks was about equivalent to a week’s groceries in fact we almost starved ourselves to keep up our membership.

One night after I had bought my round, get in before the place filled up, we got on to bottles of Champaign. Syb had gone home before we really started my benefactor was buying and could drink them fairly rapidly, and I was keeping up with the rest of him. I don’t know how much I had to drink but when I left with a friend we were ready to marvel at the plainest things. “Come over here Mike and look in this window it’s beautiful”. In front of the window was a coal shute to the boiler and as I wandered over to the window I suddenly disappeared. Somehow I went head first down the shute landing on a pile of coke which buried itself into my head. When I came round high above me I could see the flame of a cigarette lighter and this plaintive voice “Where are you Mike? Mike where are you?” I cannot remember how I got home but when I walked into our bedroom with blood running down my face Syb had a fit but I was still anesthetized and found it terribly funny.

Next time I went to the there I told the owner what had happened just because he had not covered the coal shute properly. From then on I never paid for another meal at the club.