Book One: Chapter 44
Saturday 8th April
Stressful day. Take Lily to the playground to keep me mind away from woes. Her smile as she tackles a slide for the first time helps. Watch the excellent, Oscar-winner "Crash" in the evening.
Sunday 9th April
Sunday drive down to Winchester to check out the town. We intended to take lunch at the Hotel du Vin. Last time I frequented this establishment was in 2000, DJ-ing for a friend's sister when I was several sheets to the wind and had only one turntable. Alas, today the restaurant is full, so we have some splendid oysters at the Loch Fyne restaurant during which Lily makes several attempts to escape. But oysters are too delicious for us to keep running after a baby and anyway, the Solent should prevent her progress.
Monday 10th April
I cannot divulge details yet, but today I receive some positive news that could save me a whole mountain of trouble. For the first time in days, I feel as if I am finally going to be residing in our desired home. Of course, I am to discover that I woefully under-estimated the incompetence and ineptitude of the archaic system of moving house in England.
Wednesday 12th April
Still no news apropos house. I wanted to attend my nan's funeral with a ray of light, but it looks as if it will not be possible.
Thursday 13th April
Nan's funeral in Southend-on-Sea. We bring Lily with us to provide some light relief and she duly co-operates. I hate funerals, although this one is not as melancholy as I expected since she had suffered for so long and her passing a blessing. It is a simple ceremony attended my close family and a few relations whose existence was hitherto unknown. I am going to miss nan, her joie-de-vivre and infectious laugh, but with Lily taking up 24-hours a day and the house move draining me of emotion, I know that her loss will not hit me until later. But at least there was overlap between the end of her life and the beginning of Lily's and I have a couple of photographs taken last year to show Lily when she older and starts tracing her roots.
A Waitrose spread is laid out back at mum's after the funeral. We head home during the afternoon with my youngest brother who is dealing with the social desert known as post-university life. Brighton seems to have lost its lustre for him; friends moving on, idealism giving way to reality. It is always a difficult time when you can potentially do anything, yet nothing seems tangible.
Good Friday 15th April
Chilled out day. I scoff a nest of Easter Eggs and take Lily to the swings where I mentally plan a few ideas for our new house.
Easter Sunday 17th April
Drive to posh Hampstead, a lovely neighbourhood marred by a population of very rich, very self-absorbed families who parade around in the Porsche 4x4's and generally slap their good fortune in your face. I know, I am just bitter and jealous because life is not treating me kind, but at the moment I wish everyone could share my woes. On the way back, we drive down Bishop's Avenue to take a peek at the house featured in "The Apprentice", just in case we spot Alan Sugar.
Monday 18th April
Drive down to the New Forest. We scoff far too many cakes in Lyndhurst: Victoria sponge, wild berry pancake and cream teas to such an extent that even I feel guilty after such gluttony. We call in at Furze Gardens, pay £4.50 each for the privilege of walking round a non-descript garden, a duck pond with one lonely duck and an adventure playground that seems to have designed for members of the SAS rather than a 15-month old girl. Still Lily enjoys running off across the verdure: about 40-metres in the distance accelerating down the hill before we realise that she could reach the Isle of Wight before we catch up. I am telling you now: she could be a contender for the 2012 Olympic team at this rate.
Tuesday 19th April
Still no news of the house. I am on tenterhooks here. I just want to get on with my life.
Wednesday 20th April
Receive some devastating news about the house completely out of the blue that jeopardizes the whole chain. I cannot reveal details as yet since not all hope is lost, but the whole sorry affair beggars belief. In the evening we have dinner with Alex Hunt whose employer went into liquidation a few days ago, so it does appear to be a year of bad luck and misfortune. We all get suitably inebriated, but even a bottle of Chateau Haut Brion 1957 cannot quench that sinking feeling.
Thursday 21st April
Frantic meetings with estate agents. Five families should be moving house: instead five families have their dreams shattered for the most insignificant, inconsequential of reasons, bureaucracy gone mad. I have to admit, it has been difficult keeping the website going. There have been times I wanted to just leave it in hiatus while I sort my life out. Yet the site has made many things possible. I cannot afford to let the momentum go and so I strive onwards.
Friday 22nd April
In times of strife, resort to copious amounts of Children's TV. Lily is now a fully paid up member of the couch potato brigade and spends much of the day watching CBeebies, standing to attention ready to copy any movements that tickle her fancy.
Of course, as a doting father, one becomes absorbed in the programs oneself, hence in a matter of days I have become a resident expert on the delights of Storymakers (Lily squeals with delight at the "Imagine...imagine...imagine or stoooorrrrreeeeeee" part), Boogie Beebies which serves as a useful morning work out routine, Noddy (the new computer animated version without racial stereotypes but with a very odd slight return whereby Noddy learns a word in Mandarin), Teletubbies of course, Fifi Forget-me-not, whose theme tune I am sure is sung by ex-Spice Girl, Mel C and Lily's favourite: Peppa Pig. Of course, the sprogless will wonder what on earth I am going on about, those with, will know exactly.
Saturday 23rd April
Shopping in Croydon. For some inexplicable reason, Lily is petrified of the lift on the Whitgift Centre and starts bawling as soon as the doors open. Claustrophobia? Very strange, but it does not help that the lift/Tardis outside House of Fraser insists on taking us to the wrong floor/dimension.
I purchase some new white t-shirts since the last have gone white with a hint of overcast grey. The contrast is so conspicuous when I compare, that the old one gets slung straight into a Uniqlo bin.
Southend United lose 1-0. If they squander their 6-point lead at the top of Division One then every member of that team deserves to be flung off the end of the pier.
Sunday 24th April
Sunny yesterday, dreary today. Was that summer I just missed in the blink of an eye? We drive round to my brother's for Sunday lunch, though spend a majority of the non-masticating time bemoaning our house non-move, incompetent solicitors, the moribund state of Britain. Lily refuses to eat her food, but then absonds with a roast potato and munches away whilst absorbed in Storymakers (see above.)
Fact: clement weather will not arrive until we move house, so if any wealthy millionaire is becoming bored of this awful weather, then please forward a large cheque and the sun will shine once more.
Monday 25th April
Watch the snooker on BBC2. I find it relaxing, mind-numbingly relaxing. I used to play my father when I was a teenager, midweek sessions at a local club, all dark shadows and green baize, shrouded in a fug of Silk Cut. It is now a bowling alley with luminous balls. Although I was no Ronnie O'Sullivan, I could pot a few balls and build a break of about 12, but dad unfailingly beat me however hard I tried. Then one day I turned form on its head, a miraculous victory that I never let him or my family forget about. He asked for a rematch. I never played him again.
Tuesday 26th April
Tasting at Merchant Taylors Hall where I sample Domaine Michel Gros 2004s with Michel himself. Shame that although what appears to be half a dozen "experts" have poured from his bottles, there is little doubt that the Bourgogne Rouge and Hautes Cotes de Nuits are completely corked. Poor Michel: when I inform him, he tells me that he has the sniffles and would be unable to detect any TCA. I would offer him a tissue if I had one.
Saturday 29th April
Cathartic afternoon spent with may daughter in the children's playground. It is difficult to remain maudlin when you witness flame-haired wide-eyed Lily discovering the effect that gravity has on the human body when perched precariously at the top of a slide, or peeking through a hole to see what is on the other side.
In the evening I cook lamb with cous-cous, with a bottle of surprisingly drinkable Beychevelle 1984.
Sunday 30th April
Since my wife and I are going mental, we decide to get out of London and head for our dream town, the Utopia-Upon-Avon: Bath. This is a mistake: it is too distant for an impromptu daytrip, even though I manage to bomb down the M4 in a couple of hours. The weather closes in the further West we drive. That was not part of the plan. We are bursting for the toilet by the time we hit the interminable Bath traffic jam and it takes an excruciating 40-minutes before I can park the car and rush for the loo, wherever they may be.
We take lunch: salmon for Tomoko, chicken and bacon baguette pour moi. Lily performs an autopsy on her children's meal, after which we take a walk down to the famous V-shaped weir and marvel at Bath's beauty. I would love to live here, I love the West Country, but it is just three or four junctions down the M4 too far, plus it's prohibitively expensive and I cannot even extricate myself from my present abode.
End of a crap month, but April always has had a hex on me.
Monday 1st May
Bank Holiday. After yesterday's exertions, we decide to take it easy and drive to "Le Bouchon" restaurant in swanky Clapham to try and take our mind off our travails. We are met by a courteous, though laconic maitre d' who guides us to our table. I opt for a demi of Cahors from Chateau de Cedre, which is sold out and so we are offered are demi of Chateau Potensac 1990 at double the price. Non merci
The food itself is well-cooked, although one has to be careful of the menu where every single accoutrement to your meal carries a charge that leaves you spending twice as much as you budgeted for. How very London. Lily is no longer the somnolent babe at the dinner table. She becomes restless and goes walkies around the restaurant, blocking the passage for harassed waiters. She has the children's menu of fish, chips and peas, ignores the fish and chips and eat the peas one by one. Christ, we will be here for weeks, but Lily insists on meticulously picking up the bloody peas, inspecting them before popping them into her mouth. I think she deserves automatic membership to the "Slow Food" movement.
Tuesday 2nd May
Linden hosts his Marquis de Laguiche vertical tasting. I am seated next to Anthony Hanson MW's "better half", Rosi, whose vocation is a food writer. She seems intrigued when I mention my passion for music and asks my views on the matter, although when I commence promulgating the virtues of the Gnarls Barkley album, I realise that this will mean little to someone reared on Beethoven. I am feeling fatigued, so return straight home rather than attending a post-degustary pizza party at Dominic's round the corner.
Sunday 7th May
Lunch at Chiswick's superb "La Trompette": Michelin-starred service that caters for 16-month old girls littering their floor with detritus of masticated bread and puddles of pea soup. To be fair, Lily spends over three-hours in her high chair and behaves as good as any parent could expect, despite making an escape attempt down Chiswick High Street between main course and pudding.
Monday 8th May
Business meeting at the one and only Arches restaurant that begins around 1.00pm with a bottle of Montrachet 2000 from Michel Coutoux. This is Linden Wilkie's inaugural foray into the vinous grotto that is "The Arches". We had banned him from frequenting the restaurant for the sake of his own health, in particular his liver. The consequences are inevitable: faced with a wine list studded with treasures and surrounded by oenophiles, he departs late at night and calls my mobile, declaring that he can no longer walk in a straight line. I had bailed out around 5.00pm only too aware how such "meetings" can destroy marriages and one's metabolism. When I enquire whether he has any recollections about the phone call the next day, his replies: "What phone call?"
Tuesday 9th May
Rhone 2000 tasting courtesy of the IMW at Vintners Hall. I pay cash on the day having forgotten to book a ticket (thanks to the stress of my house imbroglio, my organizational skill have gone to pot.) On the way in, I notice the guy taking the money has very strange pixie-like shoes with incredibly pointed tips (I jot down the observation at the top of my tasting sheet.)
The hallowed hall itself is fairly busy. HRH Jancis seems to have procured an accoutrement to her laptop: a cardboard box upon which to rest her computer. I wonder whether she uses the same box for all tastings, flat-packing it away ready for the next one? Or maybe she loiters around the rear entrances of supermarkets waiting for the odd disused box to be discarded?
The wines themselves are variable. Linden, as I expected, does not materialize: perhaps he is still at the "Arches", working his way through the wine list? Perhaps we will never see him again?
Wednesday 10th May
Back to the "Arches" for a second time this week. Surely there should be some Government health warning with respect to such tomfoolery? Today is a special dinner with various members of the wine trade, each attendee bringing one bottle of vino to be served blind. These turn out to include such treasures as Cristal 1985, Vosne-Romanee 1995 from Henri Jayer and a Cros Parentoux 1989 from Emmanuel Rouget. There is an eclectic congregation seated at the pews: blazer-clad, plum-accented faux-English gentry, a melodramatic Italian re-enacting some lost scene over of bottle of Ch. Fortia and a cross-section of gentlemen exhibiting the detrimental side-effects of a lifetime immersed in wine. I pace myself commendably, so that several hours later I depart the church of the Good Bishop Gill a few sheets less to the wind than poor Linden did on Monday. But I still have a bed made for me on the sofa when I return.
Thursday 11th May
Watch "Noddy" with Lily, our tele-ritual chaque matin. The question that I want to ask is this. How come Noddy, a pre-pubescent, slightly stupid boy sporting a pointy blue hat crowned with a bell on top, can own a house and I cannot? I guess because Haart Estate Agents have no branches in Toytown.
Sunday 14th May
Drive down to Brighton to visit Sven the Hippy, try and take our minds off the travails at home. Every time I approach the
seaside town with its bohemian denizens enjoying an idyllic life soundtracked by the squawk of irritable seagulls, my instant
thought is "I would like to live here".
Alas, the house prices are prohibitively expensive, but not to Bath-like proportions.
Sven the Hippy serves up a delicious light lunch (no meat of course) then we drive down to Hove where Lily can amuse herself
in the childrens' playground adjacent to the beach. Today, she discovers sand: its constituancy (wet and dry), its odour and
tactile properties. Afterwards we enjoy some ice cream in a beach-side cafe, where the industrious Lily becomes hell-bent
on moving the chairs from one table to another. She then tries to enter the rear entrance of an Italian kitchen restaurant,
perhaps to offer her services washing dishes, but I drag here away kicking and catawauling. The money would come in useful,
but the local authorities might have something to say about her working a 16-hour shift at the sink.
Tuesday 16th May
First day of the London Wine Trade Fair (LWTF) at London Excel. As usual, it takes an eternity to reach the Docklands Arena and even longer to register my entry. The sheer size of the exhibition can be overwhelming, so my strategy is to wander around aimlessly, muttering to myself why on earth I bothered, before stumbling upon wines that make the tortuous journey worthwhile. This year is no different.
However, today I start with a difference, attending a seminar on biodynamism compered by the gesticular eminence grise of the horn-silica filled philosophy, Nicolas Joly. It is like attending an evangelical Billy Graham lecture in the late 1960's. I expect him to start inviting attendees out to the front, place a hand on their shoulder, enter some catatonic state before curing his follower of his or her ills (downy mildew, nematodes etc.) His discussion veers off into frequency waves and how the global telecommunications system is destroying mankind, at which point a feel a vibration in my left thigh. My Nokia. Jesus H. Christ, he can probably sense my incoming text and turn the spotlight upon my culpable face before ejecting me out the room to a chorus of boos.
An hour later, Joly finishes his sermon and I spend the rest of the day meeting associates and tasting a few wines, surrendipitously discovering Guigal's single-vineyard La-la's hidden in the corner of the John E. Fells stand. I stay until mid-afternoon, I cannot quite get into the right frame of mind for such a large exhibition, of which most is filled with large corporate brands destined for BOGOF purgatory. I will come back tomorrow.
In the evening I attend a barbecue courtesy of Diva Bordeaux in the back garden of a semi-palatial Kensington garden flat, the scent of Toulouse sausages guiding me to my destination. I do not know many people here, I have that persona non grata sensation and small-talk with anyone inquisitive to ask who I may be. But eventually a few familiar faces turn up and I end up in heated, rather inebriated conversation with Robert Joseph about wine writing on the Internet. He does not have a clue.
Wednesday 17th May
Today is a much more fecund day at the LWTF, thanks to the fact that the Messianic Nicolas Joly has organized one hell of a biodynamic tasting upstairs. I consider wearing some hippy clothes, perhaps a waist-jacket made of hemp festooned with CND badges? I even consider asking Sven the Hippy what the discerning Earth-loving activist is wearing these days. The tasting itself is fascinating, though I focus on a few growers: Zind-Humbrecht, Castello dei Rampolla and of course Domaine Leroy where I found Lalou munching on a tasteless pre-packed sandwich. Just three wines on show: two are terrible, one is one of the greatest examples of its kind I have ever tasted.
Friday 19th May
Rain, rain, go away. Please? I cannot believe that London is suffering a drought whilst ducks swim past the bane of my life: my flat, riding a torrent of rainwater. I am beginning to feel half Essex/half amphibian.
Sunday 21st May
Drive to Joel's who is tweaking the website for wine-journal.com (mark III) and yes, the mailing list will be functioning. I drop Tomoko and Lily at her friends in Ealing, then round to Joel's cottage nestled in the shadow of Ealing's famous studios. As I park outside, I have visions of Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers sauntering up to the iron gates to film another scene for the "Lavender Hill Mob", one of my favourite films ever.
Joel has a hangover, though not as severe as his sister who is convalescing in the living room out of sight (I hear a few moan every now and then.) We walk through the torrential rain to his office where we work on the new homepage. I try to follow what he is doing in a vain attempt to cure my computer illiteracy, jot a few things down so that when the wheels fall off the mailing list again, I will be able to remedy it myself.
Work done. I drive back round to pick up Tomoko, who has just finished eating some delicious smelling soba. Our host asks if I would like some and feeling peckish I say "yes", not realising that two minutes later she is conjuring another pot of noodles from scratch. I feel guilty, but less so when the steaming soba arrives. A worker needs his sustenance after all.
When I return home, I fiddle with some of the coding that Joel taught me. Did I remember it? Is it erased on the cerebral membrane? Of course not.
Tuesday 23rd May
A wonderful 1959 Bordeaux horizontal courtesy of Linden Wilkie. I arrive early for a quick chat, find myself sitting next to a Japanese girl currently residing in Tokyo wearing a sparkly cloche hat and attire so chic that I am convinced John Galliano dressed her specially for this tasting. Myself, sporting a white with a hint of grey t-shirt and trousers in urgent need of an iron, feel scruffier than usual (I am one of these people whose shirts never stay tucked in.)
Anyway, the tasting is exemplary despite Linden's absence: report is imminent.
Looking back, it is strange that the original diary appeared to end mid-note. There are no entries after this date, the calamitous house
move proving too much to sit down each night and pen a new entry without sounding like a misery. Little was I to know, life
would take a sudden, unexpected turn of events, one emanating from Baltimore and the other from Guildford.
Now, this book is closed.
I hope you enjoyed the ride.