(no subject)
Aug. 11th, 2003 02:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liadnanTired and sticky. Couldn't sleep until gone 2:30 last night.
I reiterate that personally I love the weather, but not working in it, and not the fact that English houses are not designed to keep heat out. Still, with any luck we'll be able to produce decent wine in SE England, for probably the first time in about 1500 years. I have, I confess, made that figure up.
When I was seeing family the other week, my sister and I went to one of the local vineyards and did a blind tasting. We had thought that they would give us particularly rank continental wines for comparison, in order to up their chances, and therefore guessed that the really horrible one was the German white and the tolerable one the local produce. How wrong we were...
Did buggerall this weekend. Well, I went to Oxford and saw an old friend, and wandered around all the old haunts, from Blackwell's to Port Meadow. Also did various bits of clothes shopping. Call me foolish if you will, but I loathe shopping for clothes in London. Actually, I loathe shopping for anything save books anywhere, but that comes within a higher order of loathing.
Friday's prom was excellent, a contemporary piece by Ligeti, Beethoven Piano Concerto No.1 and Brahms Symphony No.4, the last of which is one of my particular favourites. Admittedly it wasn't brilliantly performed: the orchestra were hot and exhausted, but the interpretation was original and interesting, and the technical failings not too great.
Sunday I sat on Primrose Hill and read books all day. So there. Have recently finished the Dart-Thornton Bitterbynde novels (well, books 1 and 2) by which I am extremely impressed: I wouldn't have thought anyone could really bring off Celtic fantasy based as much on later folk tales as the older, more epic legendary/mythological material, still less that they could have made it so engaging and avoided the trap, into which she might so easily have fallen, of being twee.
And this morning I have sat and pretended to work on the one difficult thing remaining in my diary. Ho hum. Rather sad when one considers I am pretending only to myself.
I reiterate that personally I love the weather, but not working in it, and not the fact that English houses are not designed to keep heat out. Still, with any luck we'll be able to produce decent wine in SE England, for probably the first time in about 1500 years. I have, I confess, made that figure up.
When I was seeing family the other week, my sister and I went to one of the local vineyards and did a blind tasting. We had thought that they would give us particularly rank continental wines for comparison, in order to up their chances, and therefore guessed that the really horrible one was the German white and the tolerable one the local produce. How wrong we were...
Did buggerall this weekend. Well, I went to Oxford and saw an old friend, and wandered around all the old haunts, from Blackwell's to Port Meadow. Also did various bits of clothes shopping. Call me foolish if you will, but I loathe shopping for clothes in London. Actually, I loathe shopping for anything save books anywhere, but that comes within a higher order of loathing.
Friday's prom was excellent, a contemporary piece by Ligeti, Beethoven Piano Concerto No.1 and Brahms Symphony No.4, the last of which is one of my particular favourites. Admittedly it wasn't brilliantly performed: the orchestra were hot and exhausted, but the interpretation was original and interesting, and the technical failings not too great.
Sunday I sat on Primrose Hill and read books all day. So there. Have recently finished the Dart-Thornton Bitterbynde novels (well, books 1 and 2) by which I am extremely impressed: I wouldn't have thought anyone could really bring off Celtic fantasy based as much on later folk tales as the older, more epic legendary/mythological material, still less that they could have made it so engaging and avoided the trap, into which she might so easily have fallen, of being twee.
And this morning I have sat and pretended to work on the one difficult thing remaining in my diary. Ho hum. Rather sad when one considers I am pretending only to myself.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-08-11 07:26 am (UTC)I take it that you mean wine from grapes? We have been making country wines in this country for centuries. There is a wonderfully 'winery' called Lurgashall (http://www.lurgashall.co.uk/2) I had the most brilliant nettle wine a few Christmases ago. It was stunningly good as a desert wine with the pudding. In France this year, we were cruising in the Voges and discovered that they too make country wines. Bought a rhubarb wine from a lockeeper and have brought it home to use at Christmas this year. I'll let you know how it compares.
I do think that the Romans were mistaken in bringing grape vines over when they 'came, saw' conquered and stayed'. Even if the global warming predictions are correct, (and I'm not convinced, we just haven't had enough data from past millenia to judge)warmer summers are no guarantee of better wine. (We get the 'wrong sort of rain, leaves on the line (sorry - wrong excuse) Just look at the different quality of wine to be had in Burgundy (and I don't like most of it - don't care what the connoisseurs say). The 'micro-climate' changes from field to field, each vineyard is small (compared to other regions) and produces a smaller yield. I suspect this is what happens in England too.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-11 07:49 am (UTC)I am told, though, that there is evidence we did produce decent, or at least tolerable wine-from-grapes under the Romans.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-11 07:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-11 07:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-11 08:10 am (UTC)Bitterbynde
Date: 2003-08-11 11:31 pm (UTC)Steel Beach by John Varley is currently proving very readable...
Re: Bitterbynde
Date: 2003-08-12 06:30 am (UTC)