The Good Life

Sex is a private affair

Pamela Vandyke Price

Nothing is more tranquillising than

revelling vicariously in problems that either do not concern one or

that one would solve in an instant.

A day of bills, bank statements, non-appearance of some essential tradesperson, or sheer inability to

cram the unforgiving minute with 120 secOnds of work, has me flee ing to novels in which rich people wonder what life is for, tycoons cower before take-overs, young People agonise because of acne and people with fat unearned in comes don't know what to do with their time. To all this is now added the dilemma as to what sex one is and should one be it and if not What should one do?

Apologies, dear constant readers, but I can't oblige about this one. It happens—are you all that surprised? — that throughout

a very happy life I've always been Predominantly Me, not a child, an

adolescent, a virgin or a woman — these have all been things which,

like the colour of one's hair or the

,shaPe of one's nose, happened to ;Je that way at the time. And rnodern methods' (as we say When we mean that the lab can

Put right something that has gone wrong) can cope with hair, bone

structure and, I am quite sure, gender, quite satisfactorily. I only know that I have not yet had time si

to grapple with this problem —

suppose it to be essential — any More than with fat, age, irritability

and why I cannot digest pimen toes or sardines, both of which I like.

Sex doesn't affect tasting. Some ean taste and do. Many can't—and call themselves 'experts'. This is a

Word as fraught with* sinister Ilriplications as the comment interesting,' when one is asked to taste an unspecified beverage. It

Means, "I am playing for time While I think of something to say that is not a deadly insult to the !chat who bought this muck." „Expert' from my mouth signifies, Some fool who drinks the label, asks a question and tells you what

Is. the answer, whose idea of a Wine-tasting is a booze-up, and who tells every host how much better the wines were at the last Party."

Not for such the elegant Review 1974 from Christie's Wine Depart!tent. This, the second to appear, contains the index of prices fetched by classic wines at the

London auctions (Sotheby's as

Well as Christie's), fascinating Illustrations of bottlescrews and corkscrews, as well as of historic ,bo. ttles, a survey of the wine aucL-ions by the erudite Edmund venning-Rowsell, features on Sauternes and American wine auctions by Michael Broadbent, MW, Christie's equally elegant and erudite wine department head, o Yquem by Cyril Ray who, more

a

id

I. Is

of a

.t

than anyone else writing on wine today, gives the distinction of his admirable style to this field (and a colleague can't say fairer than that), and on old wine books by Colin Fenton, MW, formerly of Sotheby's whose article is so good that I want to argue about it in considerable detail.

This Review is remarkable value at £1.75 (£1.90 by post from Christie's within the UK). There is none of the 'instant winemanship' or 'connoisseurship for the supermarket shopper' chi-chi within, nor — surprise! — any mention or suggestion of sex. The editor and contributors all being happily married — and, I think, equally happy drinkers — share my ability to dispense with such problems as what wine to serve while swinging from the chandelier with a whip to hand. They also probably share my simple notion that one good thing at a time is best — and, too, that one good thing at a time may lead to another — and even back again.