On the shortcut home from the local Italian restaurant, we came across two young women sitting on the ground near some workshops. It was dark and all we could see were dark shapes and hear plenty of giggling.One called out: "Hey, hello, can you wait a minute? It's OK, we don't want any money or nuffink like that. But can you open this bottle? We have the thing but we don't know how to do it. We are not alcoholics. God you must think we are such lushes."
Goodness, I cannot recall not knowing how to open a bottle of wine (obviously, I didn't open bottles of wine as a child).
S had a go but the poor quality of the opener and the manky plastic cork was a rather tricky combination, and there was a risk that the cork would be stuck and goodness knows what the girls would have done to try to extract it. So, up for holding a wine bottle, (it has been a while) I had a go and, sure enough, the old skills kicked in.
Before they could say: "We're seventeen," and I could say, "You're drinking underage and are young enough to be my daughters," I'd whisked out the corks and plonked the plonk down. They told us we were lovely, "had a great figure", and suchlike. We warned them about the rats that might be lurking nearby but either they didn't know what rats were or they weren't bothered.
We got home to the strains of a party down the road. It was obviously a post-GCSE party, or a going-to-college do, or something. But my, these youngsters were loud and happy, and very, very drunk. It was all rather sweet. Bless. Just the thing to make you feel really old, too, if you were of a disposition to worry about such silliness.
