Another First.

The grim and grimy world of industrial Britain into which I was born and in which I spent the first fourteen years of my life (that was when we moved away from the shadow of a coal slag heap) had a fairly strict code of understanding with regard to alcoholic drink. Men drank beer and whisky; women drank gin, Babycham, and brandy mixed with other things to make it less posh. (It’s part of what gave rise to the expression ‘It’s grim up north,’ but it was a comfortingly simple world back then.)

Wine was never mentioned. Wine was fit only for softies, perverts and foreigners. ‘If God had meant me to drink wine, he’d have made me a Frenchman,’ claimed the coal miners as they marched homeward every morning with their picks and Davy lamps, giving rousing renditions of On Ilkley Moor Bah’t ‘At and Cwm Rhondda (or Stoke City, Stoke City, We’ll Support You Evermore sung to the same tune.)

I think I was in my twenties when I first drank wine.

Horrid stuff.

Maiden’s water.

Mine’s a pint.

Sorted.

I’ve never been a wine drinker, except with one proviso: I like fortified wines. I drank sherry as a kid, then moved onto port when I got older. Today I had my first taste of Madeira. I had trouble distinguishing it from port, except to suggest, perhaps, that it was a little more ‘earthy.’ But I liked it, and it was my fourth ‘first’ this month, after the badger in the garden and the literary stuff.

Which is the point of the post. I took a long time to get there, didn’t I?

I’ve had a difficult Christmas Eve. Indulgence is requested.