A friend of many years past, called John, came to mind the other day while I was stirring the cauldron in which I make my Sangria. Not unlike Willy Shakespeare's Witches, 'hubble-ing' and 'bubble-ing' (Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3), except I do it all on my lonesome, rarely cackle, and do it all in a decorously masculine way!

John and his wife were holidaying in northern Spain not too far from where I was pitched on a caravan site. They chose to visit us one day and were treated to a slap-up meal, a curry supper à la Hyacinth Bucket, a typically Dutch dish from the couple on the terrace below, and a spaghetti concoction from the two Italian student-doctors from the same level as the Dutch. I provided the Sangria which, in Spain, is akin to 'taking coals to Newcastle'. John polished off a couple of glasses without them touching the sides and declared the Sangria a winner. Better than the tepid beer alternative. His wife knocked back a couple of glasses in a similar fashion. I decided to 'warn' against the driver consuming any more, and was informed that she had drawn the short straw so it was OK for John to continue - said John!

The evening was a delight, duly lubricated by several rounds of the nectar-like Sangria. It even included an impromptu demonstration by the two Italian boys on how to cook spaghetti. The demo included a testing phase where one of them dipped his fingers into the pan of water and removed a couple of strands of spaghetti and threw them at the bare chest of the other. If they stuck, the spaghetti was cooked. After each failed attempt the strands of spaghetti were retrieved from wherever they fell and returned to the pot to continue boiling. Don't try this one at home, especially in a confined kitchen space!

Like all good things the evening had to come to an end.

Around midnight our non-camper guests said their rather raucous and unintelligible goodbyes, poured themselves into the car, aimed it at the entrance gates of the camp-site, which fortunately were the exit gates as well, intending to join the motorway that would take them home.

Many months later I ran into John whilst we were attending a 3-day military seminar run by the RAF. It was 'attendance-only' and there was no pressure on either of us to complete course work and the like. John, on one of our several sessions in the bar, recounted the saga of the journey home after that night on the Sangria. It was apparently indelibly etched into his subconscious, and to emphasise the fact he declared that he had never touched a drop of Sangria since that evening!

Mrs John (to save a blush or two), a strong-willed woman at the best of times, had chosen to ignore my advice about the driver not drinking any more of my lethal brew. She had apparently quaffed several glasses whilst my back was turned. She could still see, barely, to keep the car on the road, but Spanish road signs were her downfall. She made it to the motorway, but opted to go in the opposite direction. John recalled that he indulged in some feeble defiance, but was too far gone to care. Eventually the penny dropped, about the time they had to pull off the motorway to spend one, and then they tried to decipher the road map that they carried for just such emergencies. The fanfolds defeated the pair of them!

The epic, as narrated by John, was long and eventful, filled with descriptions of inebriated attempts to speak Spanish (neither of them could speak the language when sober), attempting to get directions so that they could start travelling north instead of continuing further south. To cut to the chase - they eventually made it home in one piece. Lucky them!

John was asked to open the gate to the walled compound so that Mrs John could drive the car to safety. That task apparently defeated him too. So she abandoned the car where she had stopped it, and as far as she was concerned that is where it was going to spend the night. It did. Safely. They managed to stagger up a couple of flights of steps to their fancy apartment and Mrs John decided her day was done. Fully clothed she spread-eagled herself, comatose, across both sides of the bed. John's defiance still hadn't reached the stages of rebellion so he curled up in a ball in front of the built-in wardrobe, also fully clothed, and quickly reached the state of euphoria his wife was enjoying.

About four thirty in the morning John decided that he really needed to go out for a slow walk, down to the seafront and back, to combat the moving ceiling that kept creeping up on his unconscious state. I could sympathise; been there, seen it, done it. And that damn ceiling always seems to move in a circular motion!

John recollected that as he staggered to the sea front, his legs refusing to do what his addled brain was telling them to, that if somebody had been looking for an ambassador to represent the drunken Brit abroad, he was waaaaay out in front as the most qualified candidate.

All because of something that looks as innocuous and inviting as this ...

I intend to put up the recipe, somewhere, blow by blow, if a few of you want to try it out. It takes about 5 minutes to make, and even less to drink it.

Saude ...

Update: Recipe-hunters click here (opens in a new window). Enjoy!

This is the 'world-famous' Fletch recipe for Sangria. Even the Portuguese and Spanish are envious of it. People from many countries in Europe, and even as far away as Australia, have called around to sample the brew.

I am soooooooo consumed with pride!

The ingredients. 500ml cheap red wine 1 med orange 1 med lemon 3 x 33ml cheap gin (shot glass) 2 x 33ml cheap vodka 1 x 33ml cheap brandy 3 heaped serving spoons sugar
Add 3 heaped serving spoons of sugar to the 500ml of wine. Mix well.
Quarter the fruit and then slice each quarter into 3 segments. Trim the pith and de-seed the fruit. The pith and seeds tend to leave a bitter taste, not to mention unseating your drunken guests dentures! This is you being a good host!
3 x 33ml of cheap gin ...
... 2 of really cheap vodka ...
... and 1 of really, really cheap brandy!
Add lots of ice and top up with sparkling lemonaide which gives it a fizz. You could substitute a really awful 'sparkling wine' and call it a 'Champagne Sangria'! Your choice.
Preparations complete. Give it a good final stir. It is now ready to be served.
I would strongly recommend that you use smaller glasses, especially if there are many guests, or you'll be running in and out of the kitchen to make more, and MORE Sangria!

Endnotes:

• A normal Sangria Jug will serve 6 people if the glasses are half the size of the ones shown in the picture.
• If you decide to make a batch that will serve more, say 12, double the ingredients, but DON'T double the quantity of spirits. It will knock your guests for a six!
• You might want to experiment by adding small quantities of apple or peach to the fruit. More than half a peach will make the drink taste 'sickly'.
• If you think there isn't enough orange flavour, add about 50ml of concentrated orange juice to the mix.

Enjoy ...

There is no avoiding the fact that livestock farms are intrinsically smelly places. The farm that adjoins our property is no different; worse, it has been allowed to deteriorate into a barely useable piece of slurry.

The owner is an absentee-farmer who spends the majority of his time in Brasil. He appears to have left the responsibility of running the place to a farm manager who is incapable of organizing a piss-up in a brewery. And he, the farm manager, has surrounded himself with workers that make him look like a rocket scientist. I guess it is all a matter of perception; hire 'dumb' and 'dumber' and you are bound to appear intelligent!

This is the sight that met us on one of our previous visits:

I experienced a feeling of 'mild-rage' when I first set eyes on this. I've never had that emotion about property before. Let's be honest, I've never owned any property before, so I've never felt the need to get worked up about something like this. Apparently one of the idiot farmhands had nudged the wall with his tractor whilst trying to clear the effluent on the other side. This was the result!

I am, nevertheless, a firm believer in the old adage that, 'Every cloud has a silver lining', and I always work hard to try to spot it. And spot it I did. Look at that picture again and take a closer look at the grass on 'my-side-of-the-fence' (wall, if you prefer). Where there should have been an overgrown jungle, inhabited by various species of ferocious wild animal, there was only close-cropped grass. Scraggly, I admit, with a neatly marked 'path' which I assume was made by the farmworkers wandering down to the river through MY property, but cropped grass all the same!

Sheep!

The little blighters had wandered across, because nobody told them they couldn't, and proceeded to help me out with the overgrowth problem. Lovely little lambs!

But the stench was pretty unbearable, and when the wind blew in the wrong direction I could only imagine how unpleasant it would be to try to sit out on our patio and sip our Sangria's at sunset. Something would have to be done about this situation. Probably another trip to City Hall to get a restraining order on an absentee landlord.

And what hope of us getting that enforced?

Little did we know that a solution was about to present itself without any help or encouragement from us ...