Eva's Wine Cellar

The really cool thing to say when you fart audibly is "fall out the officers".

Not wishing to be the one who throws a wet blanket over the conversation by changing the subject under consideration because doing so is disrespectful to osso who introduced it, it reminded me when I read her apology for the multiple fart posts of the fart machine the teenage daughter of one of the blokes in the snooker room at the club brought home from a joke shop in Blackpool after a day-trip there.

The machine was in two parts and could do as many farts as required assuming the batteries in the remote control hadn't gone flat. (Everybody knows what a dead loss flat batteries are.) The speaker could be placed up to about 50 feet away from the remote and activated at will.

It had three settings: soprano, tenor and bassoon.

This young lady had placed the speaker in this guy's garden shed and when she and her mother and sister and uncle and aunt, in the female line, were gathered around the patio table she found an excuse to get the guy to go in there. At which point she activated the device and only she knew.

Anyway, he brought this thing into the club one night. It was a netball night and the supervisors of the netball used to come into our games room for a drink having infested it due to a bribe the club's committee had taken from the National Lottery. It had been men only since the club was built in the 1920s. The £250,000 grant was on condition that the men only rule was torn up. These ladies, four or five usually, sat at a table at one end of one leg of the L-shaped room and they could not been seen from the leg where the two full-sized snooker tables were located.

So he placed the speaker on the window ledge behind a box of dominoes next to where Brown Owl usually sat to discuss with her chicks how to wrest the key to the gate off the bowling committee. He let them settle in and then he activated bassoon. We all laughed of course and one of us went to the corner to look at them admonishingly.

Oh--those were the days. After that they returned to the ladies room which was really quite comfortable and it was inexplicable why they should ever have thought to leave it for our Spartan conditions in the first place.

The judges might allow women to invade traditional male sanctuaries but we can get you out if we try to.

Ah spendius, still living in the 19th century, eh? Poor sap!

It's the saps living in the 21st century I feel sorry for. They never know what's going to be done to them next.

You see Cal--as a culture ages all the important decisions have been taken and the poor old legislators have nothing to exert their power with except new fangled novelties and then nobody is ever sure of what they like and end up running around like blue-arsed flies from one thing to another, all doing different things and each one claiming how wonderful it is when they are doing it and boring everybody stiff with their cliched and banal recollections of whatever it is.

They go to Timbuktoo ostensibly to see the world, that's a laugh, and all they see is themselves being smart enough and sophisticated enough to be in Timbuktoo and getting away from everybody they know, or think they know due to having exchanged Christmas cards.

But you do live in the 21st century, nevertheless.

Why the obsession with farts? - a usually uninteresting subject. I do recall once doing a high perfomance takeoff in a lightly loaded F-14 - pulled up from the runway to a near vertical afterburner climb to about 18 thousand feet ... very cool. Unknown to me, the cockpit pressure controller was stuck, leaving me with no cockpit pressurization during the rapid climb. I farted continuously all the way up to 18 thousand feet ... and it stung !

Good enough for you George. Ring sting at 18 thou. Did it not fray your Y-fronts?

It was osso who started with the farts and Cal chipped in so I thought I would go with the flow. To have changed the subject pointedly would have been an implied criticism of the discussion.

Not necessarily. Anyone can change the subject here. Maybe there's something different they really want to say.

What types of cheese are served here? I was on a line and they mentioned you had several different ones.

There's no cheese here Sturgie. We are not little girls playing pretend with pebbles. Google is the place for the range of cheeses. Shops are where they can be found. Quite inexpensive mostly.

In fact there is so much cheese about that experts are employed to try to cajole us into eating it. It really is common fodder.

Fodder, huh? I haven't had a plate of fodder lately but you seem like a knowledgeable wait-person. One fodder with a salad and a potato soup.

Not really, but it's even better with a spash of OJ

Just ignore spendius, the sour puss! He's English, you know....

Here is a good selection of cheese for you

Oh good, you remembered the olives! Good cheese always makes me want olives.

Beautiful table. I can almost taste the tangy cheese; the ripe olives; the sweet grapes and the smooth Barolo wine.

I suspect even 'ole Spendius would enjoy it. Think of a patio near Amalfi overlooking the sea, with that spread before you. Life is a joy.

Good that you mention the Amalfi Coast, because I'll be there in September for 7-days enjoying Southern Italy, and 7-days enjoying Northern Italy.

Naturally, CI, I'll want to hear all about this.

The only time life can be considered a joy George is the one time I would get ostracised for if I went into it in detail.

If you think that a patio near Amalfi overlooking the sea, with that spread before me, can hold a candle to it I think there must be something wrong with you such as flat-out, unmitigated, incorrigible, unrepentant misogyny disguised under a snowstorm of phony flatteries intended to ingratiate yourself with women whose wits have been rendered null and void.

I can afford to do a patio near Amalfi overlooking the sea, with that spread before me, as often as it is possible given the limits of my digestion.

If you were better read you would know that Spendius was given a pedigree consisting of a Greek rhetorician and a Campanian prostitute in the period before Naples became posh and learned to receive intellectuals fresh off long sea journeys with taste and decorum.

Life is always a joy, especially when there is good food and nice people around you!

Cicerone, you just can't sit put for long, can you ? Amalfi is just beautiful, you'll enjoy it.

Soon we're heading out for Amsterdam and Munich....I am so looking forward to that.

Well, I made what I thought was a funny take on the ellipsis when I was talking about english cucumbers, and then managed to post that three (or was it more) times. Which was a set of actions that could be taken metaphorically as farting in yet another way.

The fart has precedence on the flow, you know that.

Good story, including being true.