Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Holidays with Mum

When did you last go on holiday with your parents? 12? 16? 18?.....try 40! I took a week out before Easter to pop over to the Costa Del Sol with my mother as I just thought it'd be a nice relaxing week. To say it was a slower paced holiday than normal might be under stating somewhat - far from spending my time windsurfing and paragliding, it was a novel experience to walk fast at any point in the week....and steps were to be avoided. This is not a complaint I hasten to add, for a) as most of you who know me will have already realised, windsurfing and paragliding normally take second place to sitting in a bar with a drink when I'm on holiday anyway, and b) with todays rather frantic lifestyle surely it's good for the health to slow down completely once in a while.
So we pottered about Nerja (lovely town that hasn't been anywhere near as spoilt as much of the Costa) from bar to bar (cup of tea? etc.) and drove about the countryside to Ronda and Alhambra (although due to a lack of foresight on the booking tickets front drove straight back for Alhambra without going in) at a pace far more consistant with the mediterranean lifestyle.
One thing there is to be said about taking a holiday with your mother later on in life is you tend to find out a whole lot more about your family history than you do when visitin gat home. In the UK there's always someone else about, so you don't tend to talk as openly - not that I'd say I learnt any family secrets or skeletons, just that you get on to topics that just don't come up as much at home. I never knew for instance that my father worked the dredgers in the solent after he left the Navy - not particularly interesting in itself, but for me it's nice to build up a better picture of my own family.

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Pinot Noir - "I'm leaving if they choose Merlot! I'm not drinking f**** Merlot!"

Tesco finest Malborough Pinot Noir from New Zealand is a great buy at the moment at £6.99(save £3.00 in their wine sale). Of course I'm only trying it because I've just watched Sideways (those of you who have, will understand), but I must admit I'm quite surprised. I'm normally a good, heavy Shiraz drinker and like a red wine that takes hold of your taste buds the same way the Ebola virus take hold of your internal organs, but this is a very elegant wine at only 13.5% (which for me who averages 14.5 and 15% wines normally, is fairly weak) and flows across the tongue with a much thinner consistancy that your average Shiraz and to start with you think it's a tad watery, but all the flavours of the pinot grape then have a chance to get to you and you get a really complex set of tastes. At this point I should start using allsorts of words to do with summer berry varieties, tobacco, tar, plum and spices to numerous to mention, but to be honest trying to remember back to last night when I sank the bottle involves remembering back through the other bottle of french shite that I drank after it, so I haven't the foggiest exactly what those flavours were, but I can remember thinking it was bloodly good wine with an elegant and complex character and I must get some more. So for those of you who are now thinking "what a complete snobby tosser!" - why are you still reading this? And for those of you who like a drop of the red stuff and are happy to take a recomendation for something a little different, get down to Tesco before I clean them out! Red label and on the top shelf - I have to say that even at the sale price of £7 this is still an expensive wine compared to what I normally pay, but while these bottles that are normally a tenner and over are reduced, it's an ideal time to see if they are worth the extra.