Booze

At a family meeting yesterday it was agreed that we had become a little too precious about our wine buying and that some down-sizing was called for.

So off to Marks & Spencer where we bought one each of the 15 miniature wine lines on offer, learning in the process that what I thought was as half bottle was actually a two thirds bottle and a miniature was a third bottle. Unlike whisky which I think really is halves and quarters.

The self checkouts rather better organised than those at the neighbouring Waitrose, with the checkout supervisor being on the spot to certify your age, rather than being somewhere else, so I was able to explain to her that the greater upside of getting all different miniatures was that if you didn't like one, you did not have a whole lot to get through. With the lesser downside that if you did, you were stuffed, at least until you could manage a return visit. Customer always right and supervisor duly amused.

Rounded off the purchase with a Guardian to tickle the brain cells while the booze tickled the palette. Rather a lot of coverage of South African affairs.

I will report in due course whether the bottle at £7.99 really was worth twice as much and more than all the others. Also on whether the wine is tainted by the mainly plastic bottles. The water from our shiny new, mainly metal, electric kettle certainly is; a throwback to the days when the water from cheap electric kettles was routinely grim.