I escort 4 year and 10 month old Lily to school as usual. I have been tacitly interrogating her about which role she will be playing in the school nativity, but she remains tight-lipped and goes all vague. To be honest, I assumed that her cherubic features would make “Mary” a shoo-in, but now she is mumbling something about being a tree…
A tree?
I cannot recall a common or garden “tree” playing a starring role in the birth of Jesus H. Christ?
That does not require any method acting. I have duly cancelled her place at the the Royal Shakespeare Company and stopped sending her CV to the producers of Eastenders.
During the day, I seem to being embroiled is admin matters which is all very frustrating as frankly speaking, I yearn to spend the entire day writing.
It rarely happens nowadays.
Still, I manage to compose what I estimate to be the definitive history of Chateau L’Eglise-Clinet, which requires a great deal of fathoming out old documents and translating J.A. Garde’s riveting “L’Histoire de Pomerol”. Then in the evening, I catch the train into London and meet with my fragrant Japanese friend Rie, who wants to show me around the recently refurbished Morton’s Club in Berkeley Square. It is so chichi it hurts, a basement private room with an obligatory air-conditioned glass cabinet full of magnums of Cristal, DP, Krug Clos de Mesnil etc. I can just imagine Chelsea football players popping a few of those in the next few months.
Then on to “The Square” where I have been invited to the Claret Club’s 1985 First Growth soirée. It is thronging with investment bankers and hedge fund managers who all pay a monthly fee for a series of themed dinners and very well organized they are too. There is thankfully not an excessive number of wines, there is no sense of wine snobbery, everyone is there to enjoy and not over-analyze the wines and Philip Howard’s cooking is exceptional as ever. The Dom Perignon Oenotheque 1995 forms an appropriately sophisticated starter and our table elects the Haut-Brion ’85 as wine of the night. I make a brief speech that seems to go down well, conflab with a few guests and then hurry down to Green Park so that I do not miss my last train home. It takes a Herculean effort to stay awake, the residues of jet-lag continuing to weigh heavy on my eyelids so I delve into “Billionaire’s Vinegar” which is stimulating enough to ensure that I am not comatose by the time we reach a bitterly cold Guildford.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | 1985, first growth, nativity
