booze in a bag

i drink wine from a box-- on a semi-regular basis. which means i have officially become my parents- in their thirties, not sixties, that would involve duty-free sized bottles of gin. things have changed- a little- since then. the empties my then, six year old brother, and i were given to use as booze cruise floaties in the novotel pool used to be all silvery and space suit looking, now you just get a giant sandwich bag with a spout- the box to bottle equivalent of a cork versus screw top. fortunately my parents were able to redeem their lower end table wine loving selves once we moved from the u.a.e. to 'dry' saudi arabia.

there is a perception that the middle east is one giant sand pit where people live in tents and children go to their biology and history lessons via camel. the truth is, central AC is far more common there than in england, and you can buy grape juice, pre-pressed, in bottles; cases of them.



our villa even had a "wine room", which is different to a cellar, and family trips to the supermarket revolved around the usual cornflakes/milk/eggs/12 pack of loo roll on the shopping list, but also chucking a 500 gram bag of sugar and box of yeast into the trolley. perhaps it was naive of our parents to assume that cashiers thought all the expats were making loaves of grape bread?

in lieu of the impending holiday debauchery, i am reminded that it is ultimately tradition, imprinted from childhood, that creates a sense of home and associated behavioural patterns.



like restlessness and drinking.