The Thinkers’ Drink

Florence Nightingale’s Nectar

Did you know that some restaurants refuse to list Pinot Grigio by the glass, because it will sell too much, and they want to sell other (more expensive) wines? True.

I attend the day centre at the Florence Nightingale Hospice, in the grounds of Stoke Mandeville Hospital. Some people have a vision of hospices as quiet and gloomy places where the very ill go to spend their final days. This couldn’t be further from the truth and not in my experience.

In reality, hospices are full of life and compassion. They are places people can go to for specialist care and all kinds of support, and where families and friends are always welcome. And it’s not like being in a hospital.

On my first day I spied something that looked incongruous in such a setting: so out of place – and that was a trolley heavily laden with wine, beer and spirits. Strange, I thought. Perhaps I’d missed the monthly Bacchanalian orgy the night before. I wish!

Shredded

Picture courtesy of Banksy and PhotoFunia

Detecting – Permission Granted?

The tenant farmer may have said that you can search the land, but do you have the permission of the landowner?

The recent spate of stories where people entering the hobby having bought a relatively simple machine, exploring near a path or in woods and finding ‘treasure’ is on the increase.

In most cases to which I refer, the ‘newbie’ didn’t have the necessary permission to search. In mitigation, they said they were unaware that it was even necessary. As well as being against the law, the practice can also be rather dangerous.

A couple of yearsago I read that a man using a detector received for Christmas had unearthed a World War II bomb. He commented that it was really the first time he had used the machine and although the bomb was a ‘nice’ find, he would have preferred a big pot of gold. The guy was detecting on a path in a nature reserve!

He said, “I wasn’t sure what it was to start with, so I started digging down with a spade and flicked it out of the ground and onto the ground and onto the grass.” Just before that he had found a few coins in a children’s playground.