Here’s to jolly good health.
Red wine again hits the headlines. This time medical scientists have spotted an ingredient that melts McDonalds, aka Ramaphosa, arteries. Can’t remember the exact name of the miracle constituent, but sounds something like introvert, or extrovert? Either appropriate, because a few drams change personalities.
Take your ultra conservative individual. He marches upright into a restaurant with his family in tow, sets them down, holds hands and says grace. The hush at his table is palpable. Until the first gulp of red, that is. His giggles become gurgling guffaws. He turns to the table of strangers alongside and starts up a high-pitched corny conversation, unaware of his family’s red faces. Pious Pa now Piet Party.
But I digress.
Medicos and undoubtedly traditional healers, too, agree wine is essential for a healthy disposition, never mind its arterial benefits. We know stress is a killer. So what can be more emotionally disturbing than attending weddings? I mean, way back even a humble Nazarene carpenter comes to the rescue of uptight and bored wedding guests by turning water into wine. As any tradesman will tell you, long hours working with calloused hands, sawing, grinding, hammering and polishing is thirsty work and needs a healthy stimulant to halt dehydration.
Evidently the carpenter appreciates the agony of attending wedding receptions, listening to ho-hum speeches. So voila! Red wine flows and instantly happy guests don’t care a continental what the speakers are sprouting, and laughing their heads off long before the punch-lines of dated jokes
It’s no wonder the Nazarene had such a strong following.
But like all good things, red wine has its disadvantages. Like spilling it on white objects.
We are invited to a journo colleague’s dinner party in his new home. New furniture, new lily white shaggy carpets.
And many decanters of old red wine.
So it is I who becomes Piet Party by forking young potatoes into the plates of fellow guests. Like playing kleilat. All spuds find their mark. Except the one that lands in a full glass of red. The spillage snakes along the starched tablecloth, dripping onto the very white shaggy carpet. If looks could kill, worms would’ve partied on my wine-filled arteries. Piet Party retires quietly into a corner.
The Nazarene would not have been pleased. But then again, he wasn’t familiar with idiots of the Third Estate.
Hick!
