What goes best with a broken rib? The answer, I think, is any drink you enjoy that will not make you laugh.
I was strolling along to Richmond station after spending the night with old friends. (Very Jorrocksian: ‘Where I dines, I sleeps.’) I was carrying a scruffy overnight bag containing one shirt, one pair of socks, ditto underpants and sundry toiletries. Phone rings: put down bag – and suddenly a toerag appears from nowhere, grabs the luggage and scoots off. I yell ‘Stop thief’, run a few paces and trip. Passers-by prop me up and ask if I want an ambulance: would have saved a lot of trouble if I’d said yes. Instead, I went home hurting, then managed to fall over and could not get up. Unable to raise anyone on the phone, I contacted 111, and was told to ring 999. ‘Surely not, can’t be that serious?’ ‘That’s what you need.’
Passers-by prop me up and ask if I want an ambulance
So it was. The kids who rescued me were delightful, as were the staff at Chelsea and Westminster – as everyone has been whom I have dealt with at a hospital, not to mention my GP. We are told that the NHS is broken; not in my experience. There are obviously problems – chaps about to have an X-ray being asked if they might be pregnant. But that did not happen to me at C and W, where sanity still prevails and the lunatics have not yet taken control of the asylum. Long may that last.
Anyway, enough of sundry ailments. It is time to move from the ridiculous to the sublime. I have a friend who refuses to be named – not because he thinks that acknowledging me would lower his reputation; he is merely obsessively confidential. He has another obsession, from which I have benefited: the red wines of Burgundy. There is only one problem. At some stage, he took agin the DRC, as in Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. Pity, for otherwise he would have purchased some, and he is a man who spreads generosity among his friends. As it is, they have to make do with the Domaine Armand Rousseau, generally reckoned to be one of the greatest growers of all time.
The phone rang. I had been feeling sorry for myself but when I heard his voice, that mood passed. He was in town. It was time to see how the Chambertin-Clos de Bèze was coming along. I have written about this wine before, confessing that its qualities carry one well beyond language. I wonder what they drink in Heaven.
After a thoroughly pleasant drop of Puligny Montrachet ’18 from Leflaive, we entered the altar of vinous glory. The 2002 Clos de Bèze was as great as I remembered, with no reason to fear ageing. That bottle was a masterpiece of mature majesty. It would be interesting to run it against a Latour, an Haut-Brion or a Lafite. Equally, one wonders how it would fare against a Romanée-Conti. Perhaps that is how the Heavenly Host pass their time over breakfast, after rehearsing for the music of the spheres.
This raises an obvious question. Here am I, theologising oenophilia. Surely those mental energies should be better spent? What about another attempt to read Kant? Possibly, but almost certainly unavailingly, and in any case, the two activities are not mutually exclusive. One could batter away at Kant during the day and then move on to wine. One could, but I suspect Kant will remain inviolate.
On the subject of battery, my friend had terrible stories about the ruination of San Francisco and Santa Barbara. Anyone involved in the governance of California should be ruthlessly excluded from national politics, lest the whole nation is Californicated. Broken ribs, political chaos: stick to wine.
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