Lost in a Moment

One of the symptoms of ADD (attention deficit disorder) is an inability to live in the moment, otherwise known as the need for instant gratification.

Now, you can draw your own conclusions as to how I come to know so much about this particular condition, but I do, and I suppose rather lamely that it’s none of your business. What it means in practice is that you look forward to something for weeks but, as soon as you are actually doing it, you start counting the days till the next thing on the horizon. It sucks the pleasure out of a life, and the life out of pleasure, as surely as a dementor does in a Harry Potter novel. What can the panel suggest to ‘my friend’, and all that.

For the last couple of years, I have been trying to work on the problem.

There has, by way of an example, been sitting in my wine rack since the day I moved in to Park Cottage, a bottle of Taylors 1948 port, given to me by my Dad after he had accidentally drunk some of mine (a Christening present) back in 1989. Back then, it was already over 50 years old, and still not ready to drink. Each Christmas since I moved here in 1994, I have rotated it in its little bay, and wondered what set of circumstances would actually make me dare to open it. My problem was twofold: first, what would I do if it had ‘gone’, if it had been contaminated by a saturated cork and incoming air?

The second problem was more serious. The 1948 Taylors is largely regarded as one of the vintages of the century, theoretically worth a fortune, and I really didn’t understand what kind of event constituted a sufficient justification to open it. Look it up, and you will see things like ‘unthinkably good’ and a ‘masterpiece’ amongst other tasting notes. Besides, who was I to drink something that precious.

This year, as others, I pulled it carefully out of the wine rack on Christmas Eve, laid it on its side on the kitchen island, and looked it for two days before shoving it back in, unopened. On December 28th, I did the same, but then read a note online that scared me into replacing it again. Finally, on January 1st, like a child finally throwing themselves off a high diving board against all their better instincts, I pulled the cork out, and decanted the wine through a muslin cloth into a decanter that a French friend had given us for a wedding present. Drop by tawny drop, I poured it, grudging every tiny bit that stayed in the muslin, as a priceless waste. My reasoning for going through with it was simple: my Dad had given it to me to drink and to savour myself, and not to take it to Bellmans to auction off to some collector for what? For his vanity and perhaps £250. ‘Memories,’ I can hear my father saying, ‘are surely worth more than that.’

With exaggerated reverence, we tasted four little glasses of it, scared for the moment that we would have to feign its excellence through our own ignorance. We didn’t. It was breath-takingly good. Even we knew that, with our innocence and our untutored palettes.

And so the next day, we wedged the decanter between two soft bags in the boot of the car, and drove it off to Dartmoor, where we were spending the weekend with our children, their girlfriends and some other friends, a bunch of people precious to us. Every time we went over a bump, it hurt. Every time we braked in a bit of a hurry on one of those A303 roundabouts, we panicked that it would spill, or be in some way compromised by the lack of respect we were showing it. We were listening to the test Match in Cape Town, but our minds were really on some field outside Porto 72 years ago.

We meant to drink it on Saturday night, but a few friends who knew more than us had said that a port of that age will spoil quickly once opened, maybe in no more than two to three days, and we had better get on with it. So on Friday evening we lined up a small glass of it at each of the 13 places and poured an equal amount into all. Alex read out the tasting notes, quite rightly reckoning that peoples’ enjoyment would only be enhanced by knowing what we were looking for. You know, those chocolate, coffee and tobacco notes and all that.

And then we drank in utter silence, each lost in his or her world of beauty. And when we had drained the last of the wine into our grateful stomachs, we just smiled to ourselves, and to each other, at what we had just been privileged to experience. Generally, people understand when they have just been truly blessed.

And for ten whole minutes, I lived in that moment, nothing on my mind apart from the manipulation with my tongue of each oily, fragrant drop around to every corner of my mouth.

72 years and then gone in ten minutes.

But, Dear God, what a ten minutes!