Self indulgence. Now and Then: Memoirs of a Sort.

   Now, come on folks, be honest, who wouldn't? You go to a party and some one, in the course of conversation, as you do, someone casually says "I'm getting two alpacas, a friend has got some to get rid of.  Do you want a couple".  Hands up.  Who wouldn't say "no"?  So we've now got 2 alpacas. Here they are, peering around and thinking in alpaca language, ‘where the ‘ell are we’? I'll tell you what though.  Whilst these new arrivals wondered where they were, the sheep all huddled together in a group, and simply stared at them, for a good long while.  Then bleated and beeaaaard at each other which loosely translated into “what the eff are those”, as one said to the other “have you ever seen a sheep with long legs and neck” only for the resident sheep geneticist to say in a learned baarr “they are congenital abnormalities” and they all agreed with the learned professor Lamb.  He knows as well as I do that if you say something with enough assert...

It only took about 4 days for the leaves on the vines to go from the lush photosynthetic green to a pale and pasty yellow.  We'd picked the grapes and clearly the leaves thought there was no need to hang around any longer.  So they started to fall off.  Before that happened I continued to run behind the moving tractor throwing the 7 - 15 kgs boxes of grapes onto the trailer after which I lobbed them into the press.  Each trailer load was about 50 boxes and we did about 6 or so trailers.  That looks to me as if it comes out at about the equivalent of pumping 3000kg of weights in the gym each day.  Now bristling with a 6 pack to match, after 30000kgs power pumps over 10 days.  Added to that each row is about 180 metres long, I ply each row 4 times and there are 140 rows, that is only 100 kms or about 63 miles.  1 of those trips up the rows - 25.2 kms is done whilst pumping the on average 10kg boxes of grapes onto the trailer which is travelling at a...

  Honestly folks, I’m sure you don’t believe me, but on this please do.  Most of my days start with a thought about you; you as a collective, not as an individual, although you - the singular = do get thought about pretty often. After that I amble downstairs and stand outside and gaze with amazement at the starry starry sky.  The longer the pee, the more I enjoy the experience. Back to bed and then the day starts. I’ve picked up some casual work at Coney Wines, about 7kms away and you can buy their wine in Majestic, maybe in Leamington if you can ever venture to a shop again. Tim is a most delightful oldish guy but probably as youthful as I am.  There is a degree of eccentricity about him and interesting conversation is intermingled with conversations of absurdity and stupidity, sometimes entering into a world of the ridiculous.  Heath Robinson invented a contraption to get the nets off the rows of vines.  I stand on the back of a small platform and stuff t...