And finally …

Roger Bunce

I’ve noticed that people who do a lot of lockdown contact via Zoom/Skype etc. try to position themselves in front of a bookcase, in order to give the impression that they are well-read.

I’m told, by someone much younger and trendier than I am, that this type of self-image is called a "Shelfie".

 

Mike Giles

I preferred to use a photo of Denbies Vineyard as a CSO style background, which Zoom seemed to do remarkably well without green screen or even a plain background, but if the session went on a bit, the reducing light levels made the switching signal indistinct and my wife and I would tend to disappear occasionally, especially if we moved, so sometimes one of us would disappear and not the other, and then would come back in parts, akin to the Cheshire cat’s grin!

 

Pat Heigham

Presumably, either of you disappear to fetch another bottle!

I find that the lockdown is having a detrimental effect on my credit cards – funny how Majestic seems to recur frequently!

Denbies produces quite good wine, but expensive. I prefer Camel Valley from Bodmin – their méthode champenoise sparkling is winning medals over the French! Their vineyard tours @ £3.50 – £9.50  are informative and good value – includes a sample glass – if you wish one of sparkling, it’s an extra small cost, when I visited some years ago, which goes to the Devon and Cornwall Air Ambulance, a very worthy and necessary cause.

 

Graeme Wall

Er… Merrett method, not champenoise, as the owner will bore you for hours about! Apparently an Englishman had the idea of adding more sugar to the fermenting liquid to make it fizz about 50 years before Dom Perignon tripped and spilt a bag of sugar into the vat.

 

Pat Heigham

I’ve never heard of Merrett, but love the story of the sugar!

Méthode champenoise: a method of making sparkling wine by allowing the last stage of fermentation to take place in the bottle.

The French get (unreasonably) pedantic in insisting that only fizz from the Champagne region may be named as such. Thus the method employed to produce exactly the same ‘fizz’ can only be referred to as ‘methode’ if not made in France.

If the UK is severing its ties with the EU, maybe it should consider protecting the names of Cheddar and Stilton cheeses? And Melton Mowbray pork pies.

 

Chris Woolf

Stilton and Melton Mowbray pies already have the same PDO protection as Champagne. The risk is losing that because of Brexit. The daft bit is that we insisted on the current Stilton techniques for the PDO, which actually rule out using the better flavoured raw milk – so that has to be called Stichelton – a bit of an own goal.

“Cheddar” can’t be protected because it is a method of making cheese, and the rest of the world has been doing "cheddaring" for more than a century.