|
It was a cold and dank shooting on Saturday, but in a break between drives, our splendid host served hot sausages, and piping hot beef consommé , which he cooled down enough to drink with a choice of either vodka (a bullshot) or fino sherry ( I dont think there is a name for this excellent mixture). It had the desired effect , warming and mildly alcoholic, got everyone chatting, but was certainly not dangerous.
One of the 'Guns' wives who was daring enough to join us, told me that the last time she had had consommé this way was at a recent funeral, when it was really frosty, and everyone had ended up being very jolly, a state she insisted the deceased would have definitely approved of. This discussion lead on to a whole series of stories about funerals, some of which would make great plots for comic plays.
{mosgoogle}
I was particularly amused by the story of a rather impoverished peer who had died just weeks before Christmas, and the seventh anniversary of him passing over his estate to his heirs( seven years being the Inland Revenues reducing period for Inheritance Tax). The family doctor, and also a good friend, tried with failing success to keep the old boy alive as long as possible but in the end when told the Tax bill was likely to still be several hundred thousand pounds, suggested the refrigerated game larder might be used till the year end! One can only imagine the farce of keeping friends and relatives who visited the old boy over the Christmas holiday, being persuaded of the belief that he really wasn't up to seeing them at that moment!
This led on to a discussion of the trend in the United States for flash dry freezing ones loved ones body, so that it can then be shattered and reduced to a frozen powder. I am not quite sure what then happens to the powder, someone suggested that Dry Martinis, shaken not stirred could be a possibility! The conversation then got completely out of hand around the pickling in Brandy of Admiral Viscount Nelson, after he died at Trafalgar. Was it a Napoleon Brandy?! I think personally I would be rather in favour of this prior to burial in the family vault. Think of the wonderful aromas wafting up into the church from the crypt below, if this became common practice!
CB
|
