Nothing sadder than an empty. This sloe gin from Lucy should have been traded for a jar of Mrs BB’s marmalade. But we were less happily engaged during the narrow 2010 marmalade-making window and anyway Lucy made her own marmalade that year. I offered (sort of) to return the bottle but Lucy said it was OK. The sloe gin was multi-layered and adult in flavour which was to be expected, given the source.Ginned up yesterday I reflected on meeting blogging acquaintances. One bonus is that the stage-setting questions (When? Why? How?) can be junked because both sides know the answers. With Lucy the introductory/felicitative phase added up to zero: she phoned us at 7.30 am then dropped into our car an hour or so later. In both cases it was like resuming a conversation broken off ten minutes previously.
No time to wonder whether we would get on because “getting on” was already happening. Engine noise precluded plane chat and interrupting the Lumix would have been cultural vandalism. At lunch I may have prepared several devastating questions but already Tom and I were wallowing in the RAF and electronics. For the Mol-walk afterwards we split into same-gender couples and lo we were soon saying goodbye.
Where had it all gone? Of course there were remembered characteristic flashes, exchanges which confirmed, IMHO, things were working as they should but – goodness me! – it seemed we had devoted ourselves entirely to pleasure. And my knowledge of Rilke hadn’t advanced a bit. Shame, really. Query: Are the best social encounters those that pass in a blur?
NOVELS Gorgon Times - with several agents (three have turned it down). A Stall Recovered – now being assessed by Plutarch. Blest Redeemer – 1423 words.
4 comments:
Oh! Those are the sort of bottles I use for my homebrew. They hold 18.5 ounces. To devote oneself to pleasure. I reflected on this the other day, with all of the ways folks are able to entertain themselves these days, not enough time is spent engaged in social encounters as you describe here. Perhaps the best ones pass in a blur and live in the memory for aeons, whereas the worst ones seem like an eternity at the time and if they are remembered at all later, make for a funny short story.
Ah always too soon the bottom of the sloe gin bottle...
It is a good sloe year. I have already picked a couple of kilos and will pick more, and plan on making industrial scale quantities of the beverage. So I am relying on a reprise of our meeting and conversation to hand over some more. We look forward to it.
RW (zS): It's true - the bad stuff is always recyclable whereas the good tends to cluster, warmly and often poorly defined, in that part of our memory protected by seven lockable doors. It deliquesces into an impression and one tends to wonder whether one might have done better. But if this has been the result, the answer is no; the fuzziness is what we were looking for.
Lucy: And I'm the industrial person to consume such quantities.
But is there any guarantee that I'll manage to put all the questions I failed to put first time round. Should I have compiled a list and ticked them off. Heck, I was close to one of the earth's great intellectual resources and I should have done more than simply enjoy myself.
Ooh er Mr Bonden you silver-tongued devil...
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