CHAPTER
22
ENGLAND
A
BOTTLE OR TWO
John was in charge of sorting the rubbish and
taking the various bins to the road for collection once a week. All the bins were kept in a garage and were
colour coded for glass, plastic or paper.
Each day he would empty the large paper
basket in the house and the compost from the kitchen which went to the compost
heap.
But he never once had to remove any empty bottles
from the house.
Each morning the bin for glass bottles would
fill mysteriously before we got to work, with six or seven various empty wine bottles.
A creature of habit, Lady Felicity would take
the dogs for their first walk of the day at 7.30am. Always dressed in her country green outfit of
tweed and custom designed wellington boots, together with her hat, stick and
whistle, she’d have the dogs on their leads in one hand and a large cloth
carrier bag in the other. One day we
watched as she sneaked around the corner of the garage and emptied her booty into
the glass bottle bin.
Each day we watched the level of the glass
bin rise with more and more empty wine bottles until by the day of collection
the bin would be filled to the top. Our
bosses enjoyed their tipple and they certainly had a good cellar to support
their habit. And interestingly they
obviously felt their staff shouldn’t be aware of their drinking habits.
There were days when I had been into the
kitchen in the early morning and seen trays of used glasses in every shape and
size, all from the previous evening and just for the two of them. They were stylish drunks who only drank the
best French wines and Ports and used the appropriate glasses for each one.
At a meeting one morning I took in my usual plastic
bottle of mineral water that I always walked around with. I was told to use a glass and one was brought
to me by Sir Duncan. I made it very
obvious that the glass was chipped by rubbing my finger around the edge. This was a “servants” glass and one that I
would have thrown in the bin myself.
They had a cupboard the size of my bathroom filled with glasses, enough
for a small hotel bar.
Although the cellar was out of bounds to most
of the staff, I had occasion to enter the “Holy of Holies” once when I had to
store the hazelnuts down in the depths of the damp dark caverns of the old
house. While I had expected a dark and
musty room, once I had descended the stairs and found the light switch, I was
surprised to find a number of bright and well organised rooms, much as I would
have expected to see in a hotel wine cellar.
Row upon row of wooden structures housed a large and impressive collection
of wines and ports and each one was labelled with details of origin, date and
contents. My boss was an avid wine
fan! To the sides there were large piles
of literature on wines from around the world and on each stand the invariable
scribbled notes from Sir Duncan. I could
see that a lot of effort went into his drinking habit. Not for him a quick couple of pints down at
the pub to lift his spirits. He gained his hangovers in grand style.
Down the dark stairs into the cellar
On a weekly basis deliveries would arrive
with crates of wine which John would have to carry down the cellar steps to
await Sir Duncan’s assistant’s attention.
She would spend hours locked away under the house, stocking shelves and
updating logs, much as a librarian keeping records and storing books away. She claimed to be much of an expert on wines
and this didn’t surprise me considering the long hours she put in carefully
storing the bottles away with reference tags, recording all the details
laboriously. In order for the boss to
pickle himself up to his eyeballs each evening.
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