As I am selling my house, I am also selling a lot of stuff, I mean going from 621m3 to 38m3 means you can only take the most necessary stuff, like clothes, shoes, dogs, boyfriend, hoover, or in any other order, but it does mean you have to make each cm count because this is going to be your life for the next two years and I am not going to have something hanging on at the back or on top, full of unnecessary stuff and my “huge” storage place is not endless..
So I have already gotten rid of quite a few things, some sold, some given, lots thrown away, so when I leave I might just have enough money to pay for the autostrada till Paris.
Yesterday I had a lovely lady from a nearby posh town coming in and picking up something pretty I had for sale, so we got talking and during it, I ask about her job.
In short she pointed towards the wine and said without boasting that she knew “something about that!”
Now I have lived in loads of places and if I have learned one thing it is that if people say that they might just know somewhat about it, they mostly know one hell of a lot. Eric always used to say he knew something about Napoleon and WW1, while he gave tours and lectures!
This is not true in all cases, but in this case she was spot on!
You see Eric and I were not drinkers, I used to say that if I drank two bottles of wine every year it was a lot, Eric might have drunk slightly more because he had to go to official work related dinners every so often, but both having fathers who could drink a lot, mine was either an alcoholic or he stood dry, Eric father I have never met, so I can only go by what Eric told me.
So we were very weary drinkers, the first question we always asked each other at parties was: who would be driving and the driver never drank more than one whole glass of wine!
We never even thought about it, it was our golden rule!
So although liking wine and rarely drank it, bottles were often given to him after presentation and post academic schooling, and thus we had a loads of them.
My boyfriend tried to make an effort to find out what was what and therefore we carefully got it all out of the wine cellar into Eric’s former study to sort it our at leisure and all of a sudden, here comes this lady over who is according to her own words “somewhat of an expert”.
So I asked her if she could look at my wines, because having so many I almost could not be bothered to sort them.… and thank goodness she did, and at what speed…
I called my boyfriend away from his computer telling him I had a surprise, he was not happy seeing all “his bottles” being sorted in three groups: rubbish, iffy and probably perfect!
He had wanted to do it all himself and she literally did it in 10 minutes.
And I was so happy, because I did not have to sort through them any more and also could chuck a load away!
Her encyclopaedic knowledge was huge: “no, too old, this might be fantastic it it has been conserved at the right circumstances” (it has) so now I have to throw 60% away, I have 25% iffy and 15% okay of which 5% are fabulous.
My boyfriend was not quite convinced after she left, so he openend a few of the bad’uns and found out she was spot on, on each and everyone.
It also gave him a chance to be taught how to open a bottle, present a wine etc. you see I used to be almost married to a demi-maitre d’ of the Societé de Bains de Mer in Monaco for years, so I have been taught (endlessly) properly!
And now we have enough bottles to train him…also endlessly…
All in all, we had a great night, me refusing to even sip: “come on, you can smell it in the glass” and him spewing the stuff out, because he had to check anyway!
Thank you lovely woman, you have made my life so much easier, I can now clear yet another space, give away the wine racks and move on! I am forever grateful !
Castricum, December 11th 2021