Thursday 20 November 2014

Beaujolais Nouveau and the Art of Sinking

With the non-event of Beaujolais Nouveau Day drawing near, the BBC News website reliably sinks to the occasion with a non-article pondering the non-question of whether there is a Beaujolais Nouveau revival under way. It begins, solidly enough, with a look back at the peak of the Beaujolais Nouveau craze in the Eighties and a mention of the Japanese enthusiasm for the stuff. Then, clutching at some handy statistics, it suggests that yes, maybe, there's been a revival of interest in the UK, perhaps because the wine now tastes better... Around this point, the hapless writer scratches his head, stares into space a while and remembers the question he started with. He assures us - on the basis of one wine bar owner's uncorroborated testimony - that Beaujolais Nouveau Day is still huge in Swansea, and getting bigger every year. By now losing the will to live, the writer decides it's time to wrap up - and, in a fine display of the art of sinking, wrap up he does, with a deflating final quotation that brings the piece to a gloriously bathetic end. 'A temporary spike in retro-nostalgia' indeed. Couldn't have put it better myself.

5 comments:

  1. A non-post about a non-article asking a non-question relating to a non-event - sometimes I frighten myself...

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  2. And commenting on it too. Truly, this is Peak Nigeness.

    But what I want to know is: how does 'retro' nostalgia differ from the ordinary kind?

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  3. I wondered about that too - and how a spike can be anything but temporary...

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  4. Retro nostalgia that which is the yearning for yearning, double daydreaming, brought on by leaving the house every morning in the dark and returning in the evening, in the dark. On both occasions the railway carriage has to be shared with a group of multi-tasking people who have the ability to both sneeze and bark into a mobile phone, at the same time.
    Methinks early retirement is the cure, Nige, freedom beckons, no more the nightmrish visions of legions of the pretentious returning from the channel ports, laden with iffy French plonk.

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  5. Funny you should say that Malty - my plan is indeed to retire halfway through next year...

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