Fine wine from Chesapeake

The weekend hasn't been so bad so far. I spent three hours yesterday demonstrating wine from urban Hampton Roads' only winery and today I'm giving 20 minutes' intensive care to the only blog I know that's losing followers.

Then it's off to Edenton to mooch around and look at a few cannons in the rain.

I've always been jealous of people who demonstrate wine in supermarkets so when a friend mentioned her work as a demonstrator, I jumped at the chance.

It's always amusing when I tell customers I'm demonstrating wine from Chesapeake. There's a recoiling motion of the neck followed by a loss of focus before they say very slowly and deliberately as if to talk over their sense of denial: "From Chesapeake?"

In fact Carafe Wine Makers produce the wine in a store on 1036 Volvo Parkway, suite #5 . Most customers become anxious about the thought of vines harvested off a road where they have probably spend some time twiddling their thumbs in traffic for long periods. I am always happy to inform them that the grapes are imported from some of the world's best wine making regions, predominantly in California.

The wine costs under $10 a bottle and is pretty good for the most part. I know as I have to spend most of the week finishing off the bottles.

Admittedly I get somewhat snobbish about our fruit mist wines such as the Sea Breezin, Riesling with a bold splash of Strawberry, which tastes more like Kool-Aid than wine to my mind. But sampling has helped me overcome my initial doubts. Many of our customers can't get enough of the stuff, especially the burly sailors at the local Navy base. My wife likes it too, which leaves me a free run on the reds.

I'm not sure if being British helps with the samplings. Yesterday a woman in Williambsurg assumed I must be a wine expert given my Australian roots. For a second I hesitated to correct her.

British vineyards aren't exactly world beaters. There's much to be said for global warming.

http://carafehr.com/

A date with Uncle Sam

So it's finally happened after interminable years of filling in forms and forgetting my social security number. I am about to be granted admission to the exclusive club that is the US of A.

On September 2, I will be invited to a ceremony in which I will be asked to cite the pledge of allegiance. If I place the correct hand on my proud, beating breast, Uncle Sam will take me in his embrace and I will spend the rest of my life living the American dream and pulling popcorm out of a gigantic refrigerator

Well. Something like that anyhow.

Over the next few weeks I will be thinking carefully about my past and my future. I will be buying copious amounts of Coors Lite and Bud and forcing myself to no longer believe it tastes like parrot vomit.

I will hire a therapist who will tell me Twiglets are bad and Fritos are good. I will seek to erase all memories of New York when I joined a group of rowdy Brits who stood on chairs in a pub, cigarette lighters in the air and sang Hey Jude.

From now on I will throw away my Beatles and Stones albums, stop going on about Robbie and Radiohead and start listening to the Beach Boys. And I will kick random corgis in the street.

At this rate I may even have to attend my first game of baseball and American football. I might have to find a team to follow. The Washington Red Sox maybe.

But I'm damned if I'm going to use the s word to described football.

Jack

It disturbs me on a level that I can't remember the first time I met my father-in-law.

First meetings with inlaws are usually unforgettable experiences so I'm not sure why it's different with Jack. The process of elimination tells me it must have been in London; when we lived in a small row house in Islington where the streets smelled of diesel and the we woke to the sound of brakes from the tube trains on the Picaddily line and the gentle rustle of the sycamores.

My mind is usually like a tube map. I remember the station where I got on and the one where I departed. But Jack is out there wandering through my consciousness, through the tiny park choked with grafitti and the distant threat of violence, through the swanky lanes of Soho and the stores where shirts were folded to look like works of modern art.

And there was the Andy Warhol exhibition at the Tate that we breezed through and the squares that we walked through on sunny days, the numerous Japanese restaurants and the hurried departures because Jack always left it late to catch his plane back to Canada.

Jack always had an interesting tale to tell and was good to wind the night away with. It was effortless to hang out with him, notwithstanding his habit of lingering too long in shops.

While other relatives thrived on emotion and chaos, you could rely on Jack to resort to logic. You could rely on him not to be judgmental, to be in control of a situation and to be successful in everything he did in the business world. His charm and genuine warmth was guaranteed to translate into sales and a rapid rise up the corporate ladder.

He was less successful as a family guy, having been through a couple of marriages before dedicating himself to bachelorhood. Jack was the sort of guy who would come home with a big smile and an even bigger red setter in his arms, giving little thought about who would walk it. Or he'd show up in a new soft top sports car, with little thought of where the kids would sit.

I never saw his hedonistic streak and his determination to live life to the full as a weakness. I think I saw elements of myself in him.

The last time I saw him we drove eight hours from South Carolina to Virginia. Jack stayed in the house for a few days. I'd catch up with him watching basketball at night after the late shift but I was tired and our conversations were cursory.

We saw him off at the airport but his independent streak kicked in and he urged us to leave so as he could browse the shops before his departure. My last glimpse was of him disappearing up an escalator, his jacket over his shoulder, very much the self contained corporate sales maestro.

And now I wonder if that will prove to be my last glimpse of him.

I'm not good with the word cancer because cancer happens to other people who I'm not related to. Cancer happens to the people I write about in stories and the pale kids who front fundraising commerials.

When I think of Jack coughing on every second word in an apartment a friend has let him stay in rent free in Vancouver I can only wonder if he looks out of the window and sees the majesty of the distant mountains and suddenly realizes they are out of reach.

I remember the hint of warmth that lay in the Vancouver spring the only time I visited more than a decade ago, the gentle whistle of the wind across the beaches that ring Stanley Park and the cherry blossoms, Housman's loveliest of trees hung with bloom along the bough.

And the anticipation as the coach lurched its way up to Whistler and the way the distant mountain peaks glistened with the ice of a million chandeliers as I pointed my skies down the slope to hurtle faster and faster down the slope, seeking the thrill and the danger at every twist and turn.

I'm not sure if Jack will see the cherry blossoms appear on the bough again or the snow glisten on the mountains. But as long as there is beauty left in the world I'll hope against hope.

Au naturalized

I am pleased to report I survived my naturalization test and am now well on the way to becoming well and truly naturalized.

I had expected a large room with a small official on a power kick, which is pretty well much what I got except for the fact the room was also small.

But I'm not going to be too critical before I know if  I have been accepted as a citizen of this great and upstanding nation.

Still I am already adopting the US mindset and am considering installing a large star spangled banner in the front garden; and we're not talking about the Confederate flag with a full sized replica of General Robert E. Lee, either. No siree.

I aced all of the questions with one small hitch. I blurted out that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 14, 1776, before correcting myself. But not before the official could quip: "Aha Bastille Day"  squinting at me through narrowed eyes that suggested he suspected I was an accursed Frenchman while his nostrils twitched as he sought to pick up the smell of garlic.

He then pulled a velvet curtain shut, produced a pendulum and proceeded to hypnotize me.

"Cast out all impure thoughts of red phone boxes, muffins, corgis and warm beer," he intoned in a low, lulling voice.

As soon as I learn I'm in, I'm going off to celebrate with an ice cold Miller Lite. Just one mind and not at lunch time (obviously).

Naturalization test day

Now this is alarming. I have my naturalization test for U.S. Citizenship tomorrow morning and I've only just found a CD of sample questions that I've meant to be learning for the last two months.

There I was assuming they would be asking the name of the brand of doughnut that is ready when the red light goes on or what's American for a car's boot and I'm hit with lots of grown up questions.

I figure my last chance to ace it is to learn a numbers game. So here goes.

The Bill of Rights consists of 10 amendments (presumably because the founding fathers, nay framers) were dischuffed about some of the original provisions.

The Constitution was written in 1787. This shouldn't be confused with the Declaration of Independence (which is somewhat dubious because it was written in 1776 when the US was still a British colony).

The Constitution has 27 amendments whereas the Declaration of Independence has life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration has been the result of much happiness ever since because July 4 is a day off work, whereas there is no holiday for the Constitution.

The Declaration also mentions freedom of religion which means it's acceptable to built large compounds in Texas and carry on in a dubious manner. At least until the Feds decide to send in the tanks.

The economic system of the USA apparently is capitalist, which is worth mentioning to some of the more rightwing commentators who seems to believe it's socialist - for now.

The Pilgrims arrived in 1620. The Jamestown folks arrived first in 1607 but the study guide doesn't mention them as they fought with the Indians instead of sharing supper.

There are 100 senators and 435 members of the House of Representatives. I keep forgetting this figure. If you knock off those who have been involved in sex scandals it's probably down to 400 which would be easier to remember. I doubt if this would be legitimate for tomorrow's test, though.

And U.S. Representatives only serve two year terms while Senators serve six. It hardly seems to be worth it being a Representative particularly as this would entail close contact with Nancy Pelosi.

Then there are some remarkably easy questions such as who is the President and who lived in America before the Europeans. These sort of questions unnerve me because they seem too obvious. Rather than the Native Indians I am liable to blow it by going on about Asiatic peoples and the Vikings.

I'm pleased to say the question of who was Thomas Jefferson's mistress does not appear to be on the test. I got this one wrong at work and earned myself some strange looks by venturing Betsy Ross.

Wish me luck.

the mountains still endure

So a week ago I was sitting on a plastic chair on the deck watching the sun set over West Virginia, with a  pleasant and healthy twang in my legs from a gruelling walk down to a waterfall in the Shenandoah Valley.

It feels like another lifetime.

That was about 24 hours before we returned home to mounting bills and angry notices in bold type and more than 120 hours before the end of a week surviving on Ramen noddles and empty promises, dreams of a different life and the reality of applying for second jobs demonstrating magic sausages in supermarkets or driving a forklift round a warehouse at 2 a.m.

You can dress up the American dream anyway you want but I have a recurring and distubed vision now that it hangs naked and blanched from an elm tree at midnight like one of Salvador Dali's dripping watches weighed down by 30 pieces of silver.

Today the mercury rose to 107 degrees and the air was almost too heavy to breathe. The East Coast sweated, its skyscrapers were warped and indistinct in a heat haze. The grass turned yellow and then turned in on itself. The smell of burning rubber stalked the freeways and tunnels.

Conversation was muted in the newsroom as if the heat had knocked the life out of everyone. There are large, redundant spaces, whole departments that lay waste and forgotten. I had not thought efficiency cuts had undone so many.


Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, as we shuffled out of the heat and watched the clock mark the slow passage of the remains of the working day.

America seems to have been subdued for so long. It is no longer the place I read about at school; Cohen's cradle of the best and the worst.

On this day in 1967, a bothed police raid on a party in Detroit led to five days of rioting that left 43 people dead, 1189 injured and over 7000 arrested.

America is less inhuman now but perversely less human too. Yesterday's rioters are resigned to their lot, to push trolleys full of rotting goods through stip malls riddled with concrete cancer.

The euphoria of Obama's election victory has long since faded away. The visionary has turned back into a politician. The cheer has been replaced with a half hearted sigh in a place where the air is sticky and stuffed with the rank humidity of summer.

Passion is a mere snapshot and a rictus of memory; a face in the dark and sensation snatched away, a promissoy note that we can never pay.

The cities are listless and wilting in the heat or the recession but not all is lost.  Beyond the horizons of our petty struggles the mountains still endure.

The fall and fall of 'Mad Mel' Gibson

They thought they could get away with it but they didn't count on me to be there to remind them.
What am I talking about?
My female friends who had mad crushes on heartthrob actor Mel Gibson back in the '90s., of course.
After the release of Braveheart half of the female reporters in my newsroom were bestotted with the actor, notwithstanding his penchant with wearing skirts and intimidating war paint.
My observation that Mel was really rather short and the camera angle was flattering was blown away like the English army under an onslaught from William Wallace, who according to legend was a massive individual.
But now that Mel's latest purported hate, sexism and racist filled rant is doing the rounds, those fans from the '90s seem to have gone to ground.
"Thanks a lot, David," responded one when I tactfully alluded to her former crush on Mel on Facebook.
I'm not going to devote this blog to analysing what went wrong with Mel although a shrink could have a field day with the actor who is rapidly becoming Lindsey Lohan's older dysfunctional twin.
My own theory - that Gibson suffers from SGS (Short Guy Syndrome) - probably wouldn't stand up to the test, although there's evidence out there about short guys; think Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin and magician Paul Daniels; you're going to like it - not a lot.
In any rate something has been eating at Mel in recent years.
Pictures of Gibson with now ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, depict a man who has left the matinee good looks apparent in Mad Max and Braveheart behind some time ago.
The actor, now described as Mad Mel, by the tabloids has the crazy paranoid look of the type that can be found at a trailer park near you; sitting drinking bourbon next to a pick-up emblazed in Confederate flags.
Quite why Gibson went off the rails is a mystery to somone who is spending this week eking out a miserable existence after spending too much money on vacation.
Give me a fraction of Gibson's vast fortune and I'll promise to be eternally happy and not to direct rants at anyone. Not even bank managers.
I can only conclude Gibson's demise is proof that money can't buy happiness or love and Gibson clearly learned nothing from his role in What Women Want.
The actor's latest outbursts could cost his career dear.
Bloomberg Business Week reports his latest film, The Beaver isn't going to be released any time soon - http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-19/mel-gibson-outbursts-mean-summit-may-postpone-film.html.
I doubt if the box office will be beaten up about the loss of a movie which stars Gibson as a man who converses with a beaver puppet.
Still what's left of Gibson's reputation may have been saved if he'd kept his mouth shut and opted to leave it to the beaver.

July 4 and all that

There was some kind of celebration here in America today, and briefly I felt I should do something about it.

I should have knocked the moths off that old red tunic, paraded around the block and sung praises to God and King George.

The nationalistic spirit had subsided by 9 a.m. at the sight of some good old heartening American waffles injected with a cocktail of indecipherable chemicals.

Today probably wasn't a good day to make a show of Britishness.

For a start America has turned against Britain of late. There was the small matter of an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico that has been gushing out about 104,000 gallons per hour, since April 20, and the fact that British Petroleum (formerly BP) is responsible.

Americans used to like a British accent. Now it reminds them of BP Boss Tony Hayward, the bounder and cad in charge of the oil conglomerate, who fiddles on his yacht off the Isle of Wight as turtles burn in the Gulf.

July 4 passed me by anyhow. When I first arrived in the US the extended family invited me down to their pool, decked me in the colors that don't run, although they do on a cheap T-shirt when you get it wet, and made me an honorary American.

Today I am about as popular as Hayward and they gave up on the July 4 treatment some time back. July 4 was spend blitzing the condo in anticpiation of the arrival of my folks from Blighty, and blitzing it badly at that.

Things went well for the first couple of hours. Clutter got decluttered and we found abandoned chocolates in closets.

Then we had a couple of glasses of red wine and fragmentation set in. I threw a couple of items in boxes, fell over and damaged a shelf and found myself crashing out until 6 p.m. My wife's protestations were met with feeble groans.

There was little sign of celebrations outside, although the smell of BBQs wafted from outside and I finally embarked on my July 4 curry.

While I'm glad for the holiday the whole thing leaves me uneasy. For a start independence was declared before the red coats were even on the boat home; not cricket in my book. I recall a press trip in DC on July 4 back in the day. The wall to wall flags and the uniform march of feet down the Mall left me intimidated.

I'm all for American independence but, let's face it,  it would have happened sooner or later anyhow with or without Washington, Jefferson and Adams. And Yorktown was hardly a battle to rival Waterloo, Trafalgar or Hastings in 1066.

Rather Cornwallis, faced by the angry hordes, the mosquitos and relentless sun realized it was time to call it a day and get back to Blighty in time for a decent cup of tea.

From Starbucks to CineBistro - a week on the run

Another week of writing and blogging and grabbing coffees on the run is at an end. As is the case with most weeks, I've met some great people and failed to spend enough quality time with them. So I make few apologies for using an entry from my official blog here as the alternative would be a dull rant about house chores and a disorder I was recently diagnosed with that makes them potentially bad, if not fatal to my health.

My sneak peek of CineBistro in Hampton's Peninsula Town Center on Tuesday has been playing havoc with my long held perceptions of both movie theaters and bowling alleys.


Think the movies, think rushing into a dingy auditorium while the trailers are still playing, spilling popcorn on the greasy floor while half listening to a voiceover for Jimmy's Bail Bonds. The concessions stand is a hole in the wall in which a disaffected member of staff with holes in her teeth dispenses candy at exorbitant prices; the seats are cramped and inevitably the person in front is blocking out the movie with an inconsiderate hair style.

Think bowling alleys, think ripped seats and cigarette butts, think guys with sleeveless shirts and hair styles like Patrick Swayze in Road House, squaring up for a fight by the pool table. Think cheap red bowling shoes and coke in plastic cups.

CineBistro, which opened on Friday manages to fuse both elements along with dining in an upscale way.

For a start visitors approach this 48,000-square foot facility up a stairway that looks like it should lead to a luxury Vegas casino.

The eight movie theaters feature 40-inch leather seats and swing away dining tables. There are even double "love seats" up front to ensure amorous movie watchers don't need to skulk away on the rear seats.

The food being served is a cut above popcorn and candy. The menu includes Seared Ginger Sesame Tuna with a Salmon Spring Roll, Asian Slaw and Spicy Wasabi Sauce and Churrasco Steak and Frites, prepared by chefs who have been trained in Italy.

It comes at a price as do the cocktails at the designer bar. The bowling alley is described as "boutique" in the official publicity and it's certainly not like the kind of grubby lanes you find in small town America. There are no notices banning shirts without sleeves but bow ties are more in keeping with the ambiance of CineBistro.

A flavor of the experience is conveyed on the website http://cobbcinebistro.com which has photographs of women in cocktail dresses and a man in a suit standing outside a white limo.

Hampton will be entitled to think its limo has arrived when CineBistro opens its sumptuous doors on Friday.

It can only be hoped that the marketing people are right in supposing Hampton Roads can support such a venue because the only others are in Miami and Tampa, where there are surely more white tuxes per square mile.

I'll have to check out CineBistro now it's officially open but it won't be the same with the general public in there.

My work blog can be viewed at dailypress.com/hamptonmatters

Unlike this one it's official

RIP Yoda

As it turned out those summer evening walks with Yoda were short lived.

During his last days Yoda was confined to a downstairs bathroom after numerous mishaps on the wooden floors. Mishap is a convenient word that masks the unpleasant reality. Dogs like people can go downhill fast and their last days are seldom dignified either.

Still from the outside Yoda looked like any other small 11-year-old dog, graying in places, but still up for a walk.

Because of his confinement I made a point of taking him out around the development nightly. Zara would join me and the experience proved strangely bonding.

For that half an hour Yoda was his old self again, gamely skuttling along with sidewalks, flitting in and out of the pale white lights and the benign shadows of the homes.

As people settled down for the night the twilight took on soft edges, the crickets chirped in the nether distance and a half moon rode up in the clear southern skies.

On such nights Zara and I would count the frogs on the sidewalks and joke as I swung the trash into the hole in the dumpster, often missing on the first attempt.

Here and there a solitary figure would be seen on a patio, mumbling an evening greeting or low conversation from a couple sitting under an umbrella would drone like bees across the lawns. But for the most part we had the night to ourselves. Walking was addictive. It felt like we could go on until the pink dawn glittered in the east, but in reality our walks were seldom longer than 40 minutes.

And Yoda, with his bold Union Jack festooned lead from Harrods, seemed to belong to another time; a time of hope and possibility before routine set in.

I had driven down to Monaco with Nic more than eight years ago to leave him with a solitary pet sitter, who lived alone with her dogs in a house perched on the side of a hillside. In the south of France even the concrete pillars of the nearby flyover, seemed to resembed a piece of modern art.

Yoda had criss crossed the streets of Nice and Toronto and tore up the grass in his speed in Regent's Park. He had been smuggled into numerous restaurants in his carrier and occasionally developed hicups which we had disguised by strategically coughing as we ordered from the menu.

And all of the time he had loathed me, making a point of barking when I came into the room. For long months at a time I would return the compliment, while stopping short of actually barking.

When Nic moved to the US a few months earlier than me, we shared a terraced house in London and an atmosphere that could have been sliced with a 5-ft long chain saw. I would glare at his histrionics and he would pee on the kitchen floor to spite me.

When I had to catch him to put him in a large container for the flight, he bit me. But after the plane landed at Dulles and I saw the solitary container drawfed by the tale of the jumbo, I felt a small wave of something I had never felt before and later made a point of going out to the gas station to being beef jerky back to the Days Inn.

Yesterday when he was taken to be euthanized I felt curiously detached. Death can do that to me. If I attend a funeral it always feels like I am watching someone else's life and death from a faraway place.

But the house felt emptier when I turned my key in the door last night and instead of barking there was silence.

And recalling all those escapades, those dark rainy days when youths would mock us during walks and yell out "rat on a string" made me realize how a dog can intwine itself with many lives and will always be there darting and barking in and out of all those jagged and half remembered memories for better or for worse.

A small dog may be a small consideration but death is death and Yoda's death seems like a precursor of worse to come, a small and furry but significant equation in balance with this life, this death.

We may walk again tonight under the southern skies. But then there will be two.

England performance leaves us feeling green

I confess to going to watch England's game against the USA yesterday with a swagger and a degree of arrogance.
Frankly when we are talking about England both are dangerous qualities that are likely to result in acute embarassment and leave one a mumbling, shuffling mess after 90 minutes.
Indeed I have lost count of the number of times I have been watching England in the opening match of a World Cup or European Championship game, only to feel the euphoria draining away as quickly as the beer in my glass.
This time the beer wasn't even cold, but at least they have Boddington's at the Pub in Hampton.
And they also had Brits, looking around and blinking in a confused manner in the half light, as if they had been roudned by the Brit Bus half an hour earlier.
OK they also have rather confused servers wearing kilts and the flag of St. George at The Pub.

But there's little point explaining to Americans that Scots would rather see anyone win than England.

On the positive side it was good to see Americans getting genuiely fired up about their team. The decibel level was high in The Pub and the American fans even seem to have latched on to the British ability to sing rude songs.

Admittedly there were some customers who didn't get it. Families were showing up at the Pub at the time of the match and throwing their toys out of their kids' prams when they didn't get a table because nobody was leaving their places for the game.

All of which is a rather nice distraction from the match itself which can be added to the long litany of English disappointments.
Not that it seemed that way when Gerrard scored in the 4th minute. I joked to a colleague it would be 4-0 by the time I returned to the bar.
I had not reckoned on Robert Green and his now infamous green fingers. The rest is England history.
But at least if it calms all the usual fare in tabloids about how our lads are going to win it and Rooney is the new Pele, it's not all bad.
And let's not forget a poor looking Italian team drew with the USA four years ago and went on to win the World Cup.
I'm not holding my breath any more than Jules Rimet is still gleaming. But - who knows - it may be glittering darkly in some obscure place.