Bottled

Filed under: Life — 4 Comments

November 20, 2014

Lovely green bottles

I love glass and find an ethereal beauty in a collection like this. Wine bottles and drinking glasses too.

Recently someone had the temerity to suggest wine in a box. What an obnoxious thought. Wine in a box is just the epitomy of tackiness; not a shred of class.

I am not tied to classy things, but some things just don’t ring right. I guess it is the tradition genes working. I am a traditional person.

This is NOT Zumbi – google got it wrong again

Today is a holiday… yes, another one. Brazil has plenty of them. Officially it is Black Consciouness Day in memory of Zumbi de Palmares, one of the 17th century leaders for slaves escaping and being sheltered in quilombos (slave settlements) hidden in the bush.

It promises to be hot, like yesterday, but more so; and the day before. Yes, we had two brief days with rain and back to the hot. The forecast is for 34ºC but we are expecting it to be hotter with the UV indice 11 on a scale of 10… go figure; and the humidity dropping to 20%; that’s drier than some parts of the Sahara Desert.

That’s where the bottles come in. Big brown bottles, filled with beer, chilled so that when the beer is poured it forms ice on the top, served in glasses from the freezer. The nothing that was interrupted yesterday will happen today.

Tomorrow too promises to be a nothing day. Nobody will work between a day off and Saturday. Already a good number of people in Rio and São Paulo have gone to the beach for the four days. Most left yesterday, the rodoviária (bus station) had a hundred extra buses to the beaches east of Rio, and on TV last night the highway from SP to the coast was bumper-to-bumper. Me, I wil hobble leisurely the 11 metres from my gate to the bar, no traffic. I will leave my bengala (walking tsick) at home so I can’t be accused of driving and drinking; my small contribution to road safety.

Then of course there are Saturday and Sunday to contend with.

I was up early today, morning constitutional before 7am before the sun was really up. It was so early that I heard sparrows farting. So there is some truth in the saying ‘before sparrow fart’ to denote an early hour. Once home, I watered the plants and set to blogging. Not very productive, I’ve only managed two so far.

Silly Box: North Korea is throwing a tantrum. Threatening nuclear tests if the UN goes ahead with its probe into NK human rights. What a little wanker!

I was really miffed earlier. A small local restaurant in England put up a sign that breastfeeding mothers should use the toilet rather than breastfeed at the table.

That is truly despicable.

If some of their patrons object to breastfeeding mothers, then they should retire to the toilet to eat, then their prudish sensibilities won’t be offended.

Society really does have some problems if breastfeeding mothers are considered offensive.

In my mind bottle feeding (unless by medical necessity) should be considered child abuse. These companies that make and promote baby formula need to be censored; and baby formula added to the list of prescription medicine. We do need to get our shit together.

America is really obsessed with death. Utah has now approved a return to the use of firing squads if execution drugs are not available.

Did you know that McDonald’s in India is vegetarian. More than half of Indians are vegetarian; they worship cows, not eat them.

So McD’s had to ‘localise’ their menu.