Corking

I'm on my second cup of coffee, trying to get my brain to start functioning for the final push. Your good wishes and nagging have worked and I've met 2 out of 3 deadlines this week. My final deadline awaits at 11.00 for my Prose submission. I'm almost pleased about my poetry, half of the poems were actually passable, two were only apalling and the last one was not too dire. I am not a poet, but the discipline of writing poetry is so good for my Prose that I didn't want to give it up. I realise that it will pull my overall degree mark down, but as I'm doing the work anyway, I might as well get the marks for it. Oh. Sorry, we've already had this conversation.

I have yet to figure out why, when I have a spate of sleepless nights although I feel like rubbish the next morning, I always feel so much worse, when I do have a good night. Answers on a postcard please.

I was doing my daily news trawl and I came across this article from the BBC Online Magazine. Reminds me of a visit from Hottie last year. She drove me to Waitrose to stock up on wine for the evening. We headed to the Naughtiness aisle, which in Waitrose is the size of a couple of large squash courts. We start looking for appropriate bottles. Hottie will drink anything, I will only drink Red, white wine gives me the most amazing heartburn, and to me tastes like vinegar. We picked up a bottle of Banrock Sparkling Red as a treat, for us and the environment.We're having a look through the shelves and I pick up a bottle and flash it for Hottie's approval. She looks at me as if I've just pulled something nasty from the local JobCentre. "Screw tops, " she informed me. "Are for the seriously alcoholic, or the terminally lazy." At which point I just cracked up. The guy who was standing next to us, trying to chose his poison for the evening, stopped and glared at us. Undaunted, Hottie looks him in the eye and says "How desperate are you if you can't manage to open a bottle with a corkscrew?"

I must admit I do agree with her. Corks are classy. Regular visitors to my abode will atest to my recycling activities, which do not happen often enough. Having your worktop crowded with bottles and corks is far more appealing than empty plastic bottles and squashed tetrapaks. And as was pointed out to me on Friday, if I really was an alcoholic, I would hide the evidence better.