Confessions of a Wino

I’ve just returned from the opening night of the Opera North production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s play reconfigured as an opera by melody dodger, Benjamin Britten, whose proud boast seems to be never to have written an opera in a major key.

I normally love Opera North (full disclosure, I know one of the chorus quite well), but I am not a Britten fan.  A Midsummer Night’s Dream reminded me of all the negative aspects of the earlier, and otherwise superior, Peter Grimes.  Incessant horns and strings in deliberate discord, keeping the audience on its edge in the same way Hammer House of Horror films used organ fugues to build tension.  Britten never seems to let go, though.  It was like sitting on a train, delayed because of a fatality on the line.  One feels sorry for the victim (or cast in this case) but I just wanted to get home as quickly as possible.  Listening to a gauntlet scratching up and down a blackboard would have been more entertaining, and arguably, more musical.

The humour (what little existed) was 50 years old and could probably only have been written by a tortured homosexual of the repressed mid 20th century.  There were clearly a few from that era in the audience, occasionally chortling and even applauding.  I watched with the same cringingly embarrassed feeling of watching a Carry On film from the Beatles epoch.  Fortunately, to avoid total boredom, I was simply able to stare up at the awesome ceiling of Leeds Grand Theatre, the home of Opera North, and surely one of the best theatres in the world for architectural detail.

Just round the corner from the Grand Theatre is Lounge Bar and Grill, and that is where we chose to eat before the performance.  With 25% off, the bill for two with a bottle of wine came to only £40 plus service.  Even for Leeds that is cheap.

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Software and wine should never be mixed, unless you happen to run a software company and you like wine.  Or someone named after a manure breeze block launches a wine that happens to emulate a content delivery software company.  In this world of legal battles between Apple and the Beatles, who will sue who?

But if you write software, the chances of cutting some quality code when pissed are about as good as enjoying a soirée recital of Vogon poetry.

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I had been looking forward to trying this Chablis wishitwas at £12.95.  Unfortunately, all three bottles I received were badly oxidised and completely undrinkable.  Needless to say the Wine Society honoured its usual pledge and refunded my 39 quid promptly.

The gardening season is upon us and this year I am so organised, I had my lawn mower serviced early to beat the rush.  Now it’s just a matter of being organised enough to be at home on one of the rare days that it doesn’t rain, so I can mow the lawn.

While I stare glumly out of the window at another English horizontal monsoon, I console myself by sampling eastern European wine.  But making decent Pinot Noir is about as Herculean a task as predicting which raindrop will win the race to the bottom of the pane.

This Romanian immigrant was part of the 2006 wine trade and smuggled in via a Sunday Times Wine Club mixed case “pure pinot noir” in exchange for a £69.99 ransom.  Not in the exorbitant price category then.

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Istanbul was Constantinople, now it’s Istanbul not Constantinople, but I am pleased to find it alive and well on Bridge Street.  To be fair it doesn’t look all that great from the outside.  Not very Byzantine.  Let’s open the box and go inside.

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I am quietly pleased that I have finally managed to get this weblog onto a new platform, a new ISP and new publishing software.  I am still using the excellent WordPress, but have upgraded to version 2.5.1.  My previous version (2.1) was error prone and insecure – spam was starting to appear in my scheduled posts!  I strongly recommend anyone using WordPress to upgrade.

The new WordPress platform is pretty good, but it is much less intuitive than I expected.  Loading and managing pictures for example, is in theory much easier, but in practice I think there are still a few bugs that need ironing out.  I can also see that many of the new improvements have been aimed at non-technical users like me.  However, as with all open source software, it is ultimately designed by techies who don’t quite understand how us Muggles think.

As with all software upgrades in my experience, the problems arise in the database conversion.  This is something to watch out for if you are moving up several WordPress versions in one go, like I did.  I had numerous problems that a friend with some SQL knowledge kindly sorted, in exchange for a couple of bottles from my inner cellar.

To celebrate my new platform I am drinking an unoaked Chardonnay from Virgin Wines.  Pensilva Estate The Cross 2006 Coonawarra Chardonnay is not what I expected.  Does it hit the bulls eye or should it merely be hung out on a crucifix to die?

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If you are looking for more wine related weblogs, you could check out the “other good sites” list on the right of my home page.

Or you could try a new site aggregating blogs across the web http://wine.alltop.com.  Here you will find links to the latest posts from a wide range of quality blogs including most of the ones I read regularly.

The weblog world has been accused of being unreliable, even corrupt.  The key to getting the best information is to read around and not take one person’s view as gospel.  The blogosphere, in my opinion, is no more corrupt (and may be less so) than professional journalism on average.  However, it is true that we bloggers are not held to the same benchmarks as published authors in the regular press.  This is both an advantage and a disadvantage of the blogosphere.  It enables us to speak freely without fear of advertisers pulling lucrative contracts, but conversely does sometimes allow un-researched opinion to be presented as fact, so it is worth reading around for the aggregated view.

Readers who idle here more than once in a Preston Guild are sure to have experienced problems accessing the website recently.  Regular “500” errors and database connection problems were almost exclusively caused by my (former) ISP, Streamline.net.

Streamline is cheap but, as in the wine world, you usually get what you pay for.  The quality of service from Streamline has been abysmal both in database uptime, and customer service.  You can read one of my rants, if interested, at my other blog.

So I have put my metaphorical bottle of Echo Falls in the bin and upgraded to a nice Argentinean Malbec.  Well you didn’t expect me to choose an expensive French ISP did you?  Here’s hoping that the site is more reliable from now on.

At work, we’ve just recruited a new Director of Professional Services. Bringing new personnel into a business is always risky. Appointing someone to a key management position is even riskier. Will they fit in to the culture? Do they really have the skills? Do they have the bottle? In short, will they deliver the goods?

In this case, I am more confident than usual because I have known Neil for many years, and have worked with him before. I think he is ideally suited to the role and fully expect him to fit in and start adding value immediately. That’s the thing about good people – they add value immediately. So once you find them, you need to focus on keeping them on your side. Losing a key person to a competitor or, perhaps worse* to leave the industry, is a big threat to any business.

When I last tried Wither Hills (the 2006), I didn’t give it enough attention, although I liked the wine very much. So tonight I am trying the 2007 and hope to make up for that by giving it due consideration. But the first thing I noticed was a minor omission on the label. It no longer says “Brent Marris, winemaker”.

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The map looked interesting.  Leaving central Manchester on the towpath of the Bridgewater Canal, we would simply walk to Sale, a brief stroll of about 5 or 6 miles.  Surely there would be friendly pubs at every bridge?  No.  Surely it would be an interesting walk through historic architecture and Manchester’s trading history?  No.  Well, perhaps a decent stroll along a pretty canal path?  Thrice no.

Fortunately the walk ended at a quality pub in Sale.  The tramstop is right opposite the pub.  Can you guess how we got back to town?

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