Liner Notes for An Unexpected Vintage

 

Liner Notes for An Unexpected Vintage

So gang-stalking is a paranoid delusion where people think that an organised group is observing, following, and persecuting them. Anyone might be part of the group, the person who stops to watch, the one who cuts you off in traffic, whoever it was who cancelled your appointment, the one who makes you late etc etc. This has come up recently as people asking AI chatbots if various events are linked have had their suspicions confirmed, leading them to spiral out of control.

I regret to say I have made the obvious joke here, that Limton is paranoid – but is he paranoid enough?

Wine cellars of institutions can be fascinating. Often for clubs and so forth wine is bought, stored until mature, then sold at cost, which if a period of inflation or simply a long time has passed can result in excellent wine at bargain prices. Of course you are at the mercy of the choices of the wine committee of twenty years ago.

The Algerian wine is a James Bond reference. Also I have a rule that is I don’t cook with a wine I wouldn’t drink, which doesn’t count out robust red wines you buy by the litre into your own container from a roadside stand in wine-making country. That stuff can be good on a warm evening, but it doesn’t travel.

So let’s talk about the Glorious 12th, the 12th of August which begins the grouse shooting season in England. Grouse shooting mostly doesn’t take place in and around London, so hunters would leave the city for the season, hence the summer closing of Parliament and so on. However in certain old-fashioned restaurants and clubs it would be the tradition to have freshly shot game sent down on the train, so those in London could also enjoy the start of the season. A couple of years ago a journalist discovered his favourite restaurant didn’t have any and rung round, finding that this is a tradition that might be dying out. Probably just as well; grouse like a lot of game (and meat in general) benefits from hanging for a few days. It’s one thing to have shot it yourself that morning and eaten that evening, sitting in a restaurant to have inferior ones seems to miss the point.

Although the Rascal’s Club is neither especially fashionable nor especially upper class, it retains enough of the character that many members have gone to the country for the shooting season. Others have left the city for the summer as it grows unpleasantly warm and smelly. And with so many of the most interesting people leaving, others choose to take a vacation as well. So too for the staff. And thus the unusually empty club.

This is constructed in the style of a joke rather than a crime story, explaining who did what and why. Sorry if you were hoping for more of the latter. But I think you’ll find some of that next month.