I Get Through Four Corkscrews

In the new year, planning ahead for January, I ordered six half bottles of wine from the excellent wine merchants, Tanners, just down the hill from where I live tanners-wines.co.uk. I find the 375ml size just right for drinking alone - enough for a weekend supper with some to spare: a splash in the pot, more in a glass, and then a bit more. I make up for quantity with quality, but what I didn't foresee was that I'd need almost as many corkscrews as wine bottles. 

Just for a change, risotto was on the menu last week, so I needed to open a white. Risotto without a dash of white wine is like risotto without a dash of white wine. The thing about buying quality wine is that it still often comes with a cork. My first attempt snapped my best, if elderly, corkscrew. My second snapped my reserve corkscrew. I checked the other bottles of white - no screw tops. I went up  into the attic to find my camping corkscrew - it was nowhere to be seen. As I rummaged through my camping detritus - pots, a pepper mill, torches, and plastic plates, I imagined it buried in a field in Wales, sprouting miniature bottles of Sauvignon Blanc. 

Back in the kitchen, I pulled at what was left of corkscrew #1. I regretted not working out more regularly during lockdown. I have started grinding coffee beans by hand once a day, but this doesn't seem to have increased my upper body strength. I need levers, physics, and fewer reminders of my weaknesses. I abandonned thoughts of risotto, turned to omelette and beer. The protein might build me up. 

What else to do next, these lockdown days, dear reader, but get onto Amazon, order a corkscrew for next day delivery. How quickly that's become the first next thought. And now you'll be admiring the restraint which prevented me from using my teeth, but criticising my ethics and undermining of local businesses. I confess I panicked. The town centre was dark and quiet. The sight of the bottle with twisted metal stems protruding like mutant flowers felt like a problem which needed an immediate solution. 

Corkscrew #3 was delivered as promised the next day (I received notification) but wherever it arrived it wasn't on my doormat. After an undignified online chat with Jed, whose looping conversation suggested to me that he may (or may not) have been a person, I had a much better idea. I phoned a local kitchen shop, and yes, the owner was in, sorting stock, and yes, after much rummaging and commentary about the rush on corkscrew supplies, she said they had one left in stock, and were allowed to sell it to me at the shop door if I could come straightaway. 

I'm struggling for an analogy here, but like a .... [furrowed brow] ... like a ... oh I don't know ... like something coming very fast out of a tight spot, I shot out from my front door, masked up, sanitiser in my pocket, and 15 minutes, one conversation about corkscrews, and one contactless transaction later, I was triumphant, in possession of corkscrew #4. 

As I walked back home, and past the shop I live next door to, I glanced through its glass door. The Christmas decorations were still up, and the tree lights twinkling. And there, on the floor, was an Amazon package, addressed to me.

I Relax With Dr Zhivago

Forty years ago, my first boyfriend told me how much he liked the film Dr Zhivago (released 1965). I wonder if this was early on in our relationship, when we were trying to impress, and our feelings were intense, or later on, when we'd run out of things to say, and our feelings were intense? Was he trying to tell me he was in love with Julie Christie? I think I might have been in love with Julie Christie, or with wanting to be Julie Christie, having seen her in Darling whilst staying for a weekend with my more relaxed Catholic cousins. I'm not sure he was recommending I watch it, because how could I, in those days of 1) No TV (my parents' choice), 2) No VHS (natural consequence of 1) 3) Reliance on re-releases at the cinema, or visits to my Catholic cousins coinciding with TV showings and three hours to spare on a Saturday evening. Question mark.  

I saw Gone with the Wind at a cinema on the Holloway Road, London N1 one afternoon with a school friend, I presume in the school holidays. I skipped school a couple of times, behaviour which left me feeling guilty and behind with my Marlow, but I wouldn't have had the courage to play truant and go to the cinema. I remember that the upper circle was nearly empty. 

Mentioning Gone with the Wind may seem tangential, but it proves that in those days I sometimes had four-hours-plus-interval to spare. Later, when I was married, and we had a TV, and later still when we had a VHS player, I never had the inclination to go to Blockbuster and rent an epic film. I was too busy with Frasier boxsets lent by my brother, and then Fireman Sam.

What a lucky chance, then, that Dr Zhivago, is currently on iPlayer, and that after forty years of adventures I have 1) A TV, 2) A TV licence, 3) A range of techniques learnt in psychotherapy enabling me to side-step any feelings of guilt incurred by watching a film whilst it's still light outside. We all need doctors more than ever these days, so maybe it was this that prompted me, finally, to satisfy my curiosity, watch the film. 

As it turns out, Dr Zhivago is more like early 2021 Shropshire than you'd think, filled as it is with snow, difficult decisions, furs, untimely deaths, beautiful vistas, confusion, heroes, quiet resolve, and drumbeats. And with trains (although ours are largely empty). We also lack a famous, but strangely irritating as the hours ticked by, theme tune.

It was halfway through my viewing, snuggled under my favourite faux fur rug as dusk fell, that I remembered that it was, in fact, my granny who'd first made me aware of Dr Zhivago. She'd be 120 if alive now, and first in the queue for a COVID-19 vaccine. Before experiencing a love of my own, she'd talked to me of hers - among them Yves Montand, Jacques Brel, and the compassionate, flawed, gallant, implausible talent that was Omar Sharif - Dr Zhivago himself.