Confessions of a Wino

I am in Stresa where the scenery is incredible, Lago Maggiore is awesome and much bigger than I expected, but it’s damn near impossible to hire a mountain bike.  Rather than rough mountain terrain, Italian bureaucracy is the obstacle.

So, with only Shanks’ pony available, we headed up the hill to Mottarone, a majestic 1491m above sea level making this a near 1300m climb – a decent half day walk.  Mottarone turns out to be a small ski resort with 7 lifts and about 28km of ski runs – they look mostly blue and red, although on 1 October they are all green.

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I’m always on the lookout for a bargain but I have had my fingers burnt a few times when trying to shave a few pennies off my sparkling wine budget.  The closest I have come to success is Freixenet Cava (although some maintain that this is only good for washing the dog).  Freixenet retails at less than £6 at places like Costco and Tesco which I think is a bargain….until I spotted an Italian mare at less than a fiver on Tesco’s sparkling shelves!

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When dining out, one well known restaurant critic makes a point of asking how the tips are distributed, always leaving cash, and encourages readers to do the same.  So I dutifully asked the MO of one waiter at the Cornerhouse Grill and was stunned by his response.

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Whilst bears everywhere are majestically prowling and growling to everybody that they told them so, stocks around the world continue their downward spiral.  This does not affect Manchester as much as it used to, as the Stock Exchange here is now an Italian restaurant.

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This week I am off to see a cricket match (US readers start snoring now).  However this bottle looks more like a baseball bat (RoW readers look on in awe and dismay).

This late harvest (November 2007) from Gavi certainly has a striking bottle.  What about the wine though?

It is the colour of healthy pee and has a sort of pungent sweetness, but I expected it to be sweeter.  In fact it had good acidity and the overall balance of Michael Vaughan combined with the aggression and flair of Kevin Pietersen.  The taste is of Tropicana grapefruit juice and pear juice with some lemon zest and a bit of sherbet dip. Very refreshing as an aperitif but as a food match it went superbly well with pitta bread and hummus.

I picked it up at Majestic for £8.69

Have you ever had a slightly mad relative?  I used to have an aunt who regularly posted me Easter eggs wrapped in a single layer of brown paper.  Most of the egg was delivered inside the postman’s stomach and writing thank you letters became a bit of a laugh, albeit a repetitive one.

One birthday, I received the Chambers Dictionary of Science and Technology.  A valuable learning aid for a growing lad of 11 years.  But I only got Volume 2 (L to Z) and since 1975 I have been waiting for Volume 1 (A to K) – I can only presume that the postman ate that too.  If there is anyone out there who has only the primary volume and fancies getting together for dinner to exchange notes, please let me know at mail @ this domain.

It’s difficult to imagine that 1975, although well within my lifetime, was ages before the PC was invented.  So I thought it would be fun to look up a few key definitions.  I searched for “Computer” – D’Oh, that’s in Volume 1!  Microprocessor?  No definition.  Personal Computer?  No.  Mainframe?  Silicon chip?  Walkman?  Mother board?  All no.  Read Only Memory?  Oh hang on yes!  A fast access store containing fixed data.  So computing existed!

I feel a bit like Charlton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes.  Landing on another planet only to discover that I was actually at home, and realising that man was to blame all along.  I am clearly missing the chiselled jaw and muscular tanned physique, although in common with Charlton’s astronaut character, George Taylor, I suspect that a number of apes probably do fancy me.

Looking further into the New York subway and finding the Statue of Liberty must have been scary.  But searching the pages of the Chambers Dictionary of Science and Technology 33 years after it was published was worse than my first encounter with a Dalek.  Hide behind the sofa quick!

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You may remember I visited Linen, in the lofty part of the posh casino for my last birthday.  The other restaurant at Manchester 235 is Italian, on the ground floor next to the entrance and has the advantage of not having to be a member of the casino to enter and eat.

Numéro is an odd layout, with a bar in the middle and a simple opaque glass screen separating diners from the gaming tables.  The service is efficient and pleasant and the food is decent.  But if you do intend to go to the casino afterwards, I would recommend booking for Linen.

Linen, you see, is already the other side of painful casino security, and at meal finishing time on a Saturday there is a big queue.  Secondly, the atmosphere is classier, the prices similar, there is live music, the wine list is better and perhaps most importantly, you are more likely to get your wine served at the right temperature in Linen.

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As Frankie once said, I did it myyyyyyy waaaayyyyyy, but he made the mistake of singing the song in English, at least according to the owners of this Italian resto in Leeds.

It must be hard to compete against Bibi’s but Mio Modo does so with panache, at least as far as food is concerned.  The wine list, however, is a different matter.

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I’ve been sent to Coventry. Not in the metaphorical, but literal sense. On business to be precise. I have a 9:0am meeting in the morning with Barclays Bank and to travel down to get there reliably from Leeds would require me to rise and shine at 5:0am. No self-respecting wino does that.

The marvels of modern technology mean that my laptop simply connects via a 3G card to the internet, and using something called “VPN” (nothing to do with panty lines, no) I can work as if in the office, from anywhere in the world, although at 10% of the speed.  All of this means that instead of finishing work at about 7pm, I am still at it at 9:30.  Fortunately, La Cucina is still open on a Monday night and most of the remaining customers are Italian, which is encouraging.

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Have you ever slept under the railway arches?  It’s not typically a pleasant place.  Certainly not a place you would choose to sleep.  But if it’s raining and you have no fixed abode, well, everything is relative.

I nodded off under the arches near Oxford Road station on Whitworth Street in Manchester.  Thankfully, someone had been thoughtful enough to build an Italian restaurant around me that was warm and welcoming (not that I would have noticed given the amount of alcohol canoeing through my veins).

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