I was busily bottling my home-brewed beer the other night , very proud that I had managed to locate or improvise the various bits of equipment and a sufficient supply of empty bottles. The only mishap occurred half-way through: due to the resident humans' nasty habit of drinking hot chocolate in bed late at night, there was hardly any sugar left. You need to put a bit of sugar in each bottle before screwing the lid down, as this is what gives the beer its bubbles.Anyway, this dilemna provided the ideal opportunity to test out a well-worn cliché on the goodness or otherwise of one's neighbours. And sure enough it worked: put on slippers, down one flight of stairs chez Fred with a mug with a broken handle, and I was graciously offered the choice of brown or white, lump, or caster. The latter in each category having been decided upon I thanked Fred, promised to invite him for a tasting, and completed my task.
The mouthfuls of beer I got from sucking on the siphon hose were interesting: a strong dark ale, probably in the region of 7-8%, not too many hops but quite a kick from the infusion of herbes de provence that my pet human insisted in adding in order to live out his Anglo-Saxon cliché about region in which we find ourselves--claiming, of course, that his desire to call the beer "Peter Mayle ale" is ironic!
My only regret relates to the choice of neighbours: I had no doubts about Fred in the first place, and it occurred to me afterwards that it would have been more fun to ask the neighbours across the landing. They seem very nice even if (because??) the humans have nicknamed them the Flanders family. Though there have been dark mutterings that it is they who may have invited a group of Christians to visit the building last week, whom I had to eject by mustering all my hippopotamical ferocity.
I suspect that asking to borrow a cup of sugar in order to bottle my homebrew could well have helped further my studies into the strange ways of humans--much like the experiment I couldn't bring myself to perform, namely asking the local winos to hang on to their empty bottles for me in return for a refilled one.
Such are my neighbours.
3 comments:
It seems that your humans are out of toilet paper, Hugo. This might be the opportunity!
Dear Madame H,
I must lodge a protest against your blatant advertising of Nestle (albeit up-side-down in your press release). As Will Self says "Nestle is just the pits."
A case in point (and nicked via google) is that this year Nestlé was the main sponsor of the Water Week. The world’s largest bottled water company by annual sales,(Perrier anyone?) Nestlé is playing a part in the privatization of public water sources around the globe. Nestlé continues exploiting new sources of water for their ever growing list of bottled water brands. When did Nestlé ever run a water utility? Bottled water is totally irrelevant to the needs of the poor. Bottled water damages the environment, pollutes the air, and creates huge amounts of plastic waste. Bottled water commodifies drinking water. Nestlé is an unwelcome participant in the struggle for water and sanitation for all!
Yours Hurrumpingly,
x E
Ah, Madame E,
(Does that make you the source of all euphoria, or simply something of a sublime and selfless superego?)
I can but concur with thy wrath.
The only excuse I can offer is the childish pleasure taken in stealing the offending bottle from a stack of simulacra awaiting collection, perhaps thereby making the first of many chinks in their corporate armour. But yes, perhaps more radical measures should have been taken.
I saw a very interesting movie a few months ago (details http://imdb.com/title/tt0478324/; I snuck in in my human's pocket, don't want to be supporting the multinational film industry) that ends with a terrifying interview with the Nestlé CEO in Switzerland--he seemed to think that all would be well if he yodelled on camera.
The same film claimed that the amount of bread thrown away each day in Vienna, Austria, would have been sufficient to feed the country's second biggest city, Graz. It is worth bearing in mind that beer is thought to have come about as a use for stale bread...
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