Like UB40: Red red wine....

Mr Vuboq wrote a post quite recently which featured his displeasure at having a bottle of wine and no corkscrew. It reminded me of this story:

Some time ago I was staying at a B & B in deepest darkest Oxfordshire or thereabouts. It was a lovely place ran by a lovely woman who had recently divorced her husband. It was extremely remote and it was the depths of winter. The roads leading to the place were coated with at least a meter of snow.

The quality was un-faultable. She done everything perfectly. The place was immaculate. The paintings on the wall of my room probably cost more than my home at the time. Her gardens were tended by a team of 3 gardeners and it attracted wild deer. Absolutely wonderful.

However, after a couple of days I really fancied a beer so I went to ask the owner where the nearest pub was. To my horror she said it was about 3 miles away. Ie. Totally unreachable. She then asked if I'd like to buy a bottle of wine from her to satisfy my cravings. Naturally I agreed. Even though it was a really expensive little french number. I then asked to borrow a corkscrew. She didn't have one. Apparently a previous guest had borrowed it and never returned it.

I said it didn't matter as I had one in my bag. I returned to my room and then discovered it was missing. I was choked. I then thought about it more logically. What did people do before some smartarse invented corkscrews? I decided to try and carve it out with my penknife.

Things went pretty well until I got about half way through. By that point it was really difficult to get the blade far enough into the neck of the bottle to reach the remaining cork. Then I was struck with an inspirational idea: Push the remainder of the cork into the bottle!

I inserted the blade, covered the handle of the knife with my palm and then used my other hand to administer a sharp shove. It worked! Perfectly! But the force of the cork being inserted into the bottle caused the wine to expel itself from the bottle at a very rapid rate.

Wine went everywhere. Over the walls, over the terribly expensive sheepskin rug, over the bed, even splashed onto the ceiling. More importantly it managed to get into my eyes. In shock I dropped the bottle and it hit the antique mahogany table. And smashed the bottom out. Suddenly I was paddling in high quality french red wine.

I spent the rest of the evening trying to clean the room as best I could. It took me hours and even then I didn't manage to do a very good job. Still, it's the thought that counts eh?