Father’s Day- A Show of Taste

Back again! This time it’s to talk about some of the trials and tribulations of the modern world. It started a couple of years ago, just after they lifted one of the multifarious lock-downs . You might remember that I’m potty about tennis and Scotland’s own, Sir Andy Murray. Well I managed to get some tickets for a match with him playing on grass, and being careful with money, not tight you understand, just frugal. I booked parking near the championship ground, but the kicker was it involved a QR code. Now I don’t know about you, but QR codes hate me and with a vengeance. Now we arrived in plenty of time, I am a big fan of punctuality in all things, but our troubles started there. People are now so obviously expensive that the car park had no staff and the blessed QR reader wouldn’t read our code. We spent maybe twenty minutes fiddling with the darn thing and still couldn’t get it to work, so rather than miss any tennis we paid again and toddled off to see the man. Of course eventually we find out he was injured and wasn’t playing and shortly after the whole thing got rained off anyway. A disaster of a day, but we did get to see some lovely traffic jams.

 

Now this brings me back to last month when we were renewing the Auld Alliance in Amiens in France. We had a reservation at a rather nice restaurant in this terribly student town. If you haven’t been to Amiens I can say it’s pretty and interesting and has a fabulous waterside area, which is where we were. Now we sat and sat and sat and no one came to take our order and the missus was starting to get peeved, and believe me you never want to see her peeved. So I lassoed a waiter and asked for the menu. He pointed at the table and muttered something and I finally caught on. You couldn’t order in this restaurant without a smart phone and a QR reader so older eaters would go hungry. So I pulled out the phone, the missus refuses to connect hers to the internet, and I scanned the code and opened up the menu. It looked pretty decent, but nary a word of English in there. My French isn’t terrible so I saw mille-feuille and cheese which normally indicated pastry, and being a savoury man I went, YES! Mille-feuille means a thousand petals, whichis  about folding pastry, so imagine my horror when a mini tower of beetroot arrived. The thousand petals were all beetroot with some cheese intermixed in layers. It was obviously a high class thing¸ but I was too flummoxed to send it back and having paid for it tucked in. Well happy to say it was very nice and the whole meal was one of the best we had, but with darn QR codes it’s Russian roulette with me.

 

This year I won some tickets in the ballot for Wimbledon, I say won- you still have to pay an enormous sum, plus travel the hundreds of miles to get there, and guess what they are pesky QR codes. We are seriously worried about getting there and the wretched things not working, but there is a chance of seeing Sir Andy and we can’t miss that, we may never get that chance again. So we’ll gird our loins at the petrol prices, stay with friends south of the border and eat hot dogs in the rain. We wouldn’t dream of strawberries or Pimms at Wimbledon, the prices would scare a horse. But for prices that wouldn’t scare a horse and for that essential Father’s day gifty why not take a gander at this lovely object. It’s a classic of its kind. It’s a ship’s decanter with elegant sweeping lines to hold your spirits or fortified wines, like Ratafia. It has plain lines, but don’t be fooled, this simplicity is beauty itself. It’s a belter of a decanter. Swoop now and it will be at half price. A sure way to demonstrate to dad he’s brought up a child with great taste.

 

https://www.jamespirie.com/whisky-gifts/royal-scot-crystal-classic-collection-crystal-ships-decanter.html