All entries for May 2005

Hair of the what?!

Writing about web page http://www.kingsland-wines.com/pages/range.htm

I stumbled upon “Hair of the Dingo”, an unlikely bottle of pretty decent Australian Merlot, when I was in Aber writing my MA thesis.

That was actually a pretty productive couple of weeks: I arrived, I sat down and I wrote the whole thing in about ten days. I’ve since come back a few times to try and reproduce the effect but it hasn’t worked at all – just stumbling around in the dark, not sure what to do and absolutely no idea how to do it.

My general sense of fear and loathing, especially fear, tends to make for a pretty insurmountable wall in getting things like PhDs done (or anything else, for that matter).

Which brings me back to this bottle of plonk.

Actually, I say “plonk”, but I found it more quaffable than the more expensive “Hardy’s Stamp” range. Like the website says, despite it’s quirky and irreverant name, it’s actually not bad stuff.

One of the things that drew me to it was that I like dogs (dingos) and the other thing was that if a wine has the courage to be so irreverent, it must have something going for it.

Anyway, I took quite a shine to this brand and was pleased to find it stocked in Warwick campus’ Cost Cutters supermarket (about £4).

The thing is, when I was having dinner with my now ex’s family, that is her mother who didn’t like me anyway and her younger sister who wasn’t impressed that I didn’t have my “own car” with “AC”, the topic of conversation moved onto wine and I made a bit of a boo-boo.

I’d had a large glass of Shiraz or so when I happened to mention that I knew a pretty good wine with a funny name – I said they would never guess itsname and I was right, especially as a slip of the tongue delivered the punchline of the name as:

“hair of the dildo”

The last word hung in the summer air of that particular garden of England conservartory rather like the hoverflies who had found their way past the beaded curtains.

It was an easy mistake to make, hair of the “dingo” and hair of the “dildo” are pretty close to each other in speach, but it probably isn’t a good idea to confuse the two when you are having dinner with your girlfriend’s mum.

Things didn’t really get any better from that point on.

: 17 May 2005 22:46 |  Tags: Drink Food |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem