Comparing bonfires to wine

There are many interesting comparisons between a glass of vintage wine and a satisfying bonfire. When assessing either pleasure many properties should be taken into account. These include body, colour, structure, shape, ageing, aroma and finish.

The body of both can vary between rounded and thin; colour gives an indication of the potential pleasure, pale green to deep purples in the case of wine and deep green to dark brown with bonfires. The structures can be open or closed while the shapes should be well-rounded. Ageing of wine is measured in years while that of bonfires is calculated in days and weeks. Aroma is a vital quality of both wine and bonfires, the difference being that, in the case of wine, it is assessed at the start of the tasting while the bonfire’s olfactory pleasures develop later. The finish of a wine describes the length of time that the taste stays on the palate while that of the bonfire stimulates the nose and the eyes. A well-finished bonfire should satisfy the nose with a soft drifting smoulder without any acidity and please the eye with a feather-soft circular pillow of light grey ash.

The creation of wine and bonfires starts with the harvest. Nature requires the physical removal of the grapes from the vine but, for a bonfire, she asks nothing more than a rubbish collection. There are many thousands of grape varieties while there are millions of potential bonfire elements. Most grapes become useless as they die back and rot whereas the opposite is true of a satisfying bonfire. In both cases wet socks should be avoided. The combination of grape varieties by the cellar master is matched by that of the bonfire constructor. The Shiraz grape will lend an aura of smokiness to a red wine while a small proportion of green vegetation creates a soul-satisfying white smoke at the height of the fire. Small amounts of tannin may improve a number of wines but they are essential to a good bonfire.

Both viticulture and bonfire creation start very simply. One with the simple addition of yeast and the other by the use of a single match. Both develop with time. The descriptions of both include the terms ‘dry’ and ‘sweet’. The best sweet bonfires are made with fruit wood such as apple. The colour of wine comes largely from the grape skins while the brighter colours of the fire are augmented by some metallic papers.

Ageing is essential to the quality of the end product. Young wines are often thin and lack character while green bonfires are rarely satisfying.

Oenology is the study of wine while the accomplished creator of a great bonfire is prosecuted as an arsonist. Perhaps the study of bonfires should be called hephiastology after the Greek god of fire, Hephiastos.

The political timeline of Dr Sean Edward Roche - my son-in-law

December 2012

Shares the photo launch of the National Health Action Party

January 2013

Selected as Head of Strategy for NHAP

September 2014

Wins by-election for Stratton-on-the-Fosse East replacing the Conservative incumbent who, having claimed expenses for a suit of armour, fell on his sword and died of septicaemia after being held in the casualty waiting room for 3 days.

September 2015

Keynote speaker at the 1^st NHAP party conference held on the second floor of the Travel Lodge in Sturminster Newton. He makes a triumphant debut on Question Time completely eclipsing Janet Street-Porter, Lord Bruce Forsythe and the latest winner of Britain’s Got Talent

December 2015

David Cameron cancels Hogmanay to the anger of the Scottish Nationalist Party. He reverses the decision and is diagnosed with Meniere’s Disease after too many U-turns. He is replaced by Boris Johnson who immediately shoots himself in the foot and is admitted to the King Edward Hospital for Officers. This is closed the next day as a result of budget cuts and he limps home. NHAP gains 4 seats in constituencies that have no Primary Healthcare hospitals. Sean turns down the offer to become Speaker of the House of Commons.

February 2016

27 of the 46 Police Commissioners are de-selected following the disclosure of links to three national protection gangs – the Cons, the Libs and the Labs. The other 19 could not be found after becoming lost and unable to find a policeman to ask for directions. Sean becomes Patron of MenCap

July 2016

Boris Johnson bombs Iran but misses. President Homer Simpson tears up the Special Relationship. Sean crosses the house to join the alliance of the North Cornish Nationalist Party and UKIP and is immediately promoted to the Ministry of Transfusions and Sticking Plasters previously known as the Treasury. The waiting time for non-urgent surgical cases is now extended until 3 weeks after you are dead saving £17.68 billion allowing the new fifth London airport to be built at Haverfordwest. The Secretary of State for Transport got a D in his Geography GCSE.

October 2017

The coalition of the NCNP, UKIP and NHAP forms a new party named Consignia. Greece repays 76 trillion drachmas to Greater Germany previously known as the EU. Lord Sean of Wayford Bridge elected President of England now that Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Warrington have achieved independence. He is carried in triumph on top of an open topped bus down the A303 where it gets stuck in a traffic jam at Stonehenge. While waiting for two days for the traffic to clear he is anointed Head Druid to pass the time.

Boris Johnson apologises to Coventry, Clerkenwell, Canterbury, Turks and Caicos Islands – and Iran. He resigns to spend more time with the family circus. The snap General Election results in a landslide victory for anyone unassociated with any of the three main political parties.

August 2020

Sean resigns the Presidency to spend more time playing obscure music tracks to Scottish Blackface sheep on South Uist thereby increasing their wool yield. Lady Tamsin has a sell-out exhibition of her sculptures at the Courtauld Gallery. Among the buyers were Charles Saatchi, Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber and Banksy.

Enough already!

The Secret People

One of my favourite poems is The Secret People by G K Chesterton. The first lines are –
“Smile at us, pay us, pass us but do not quite forget
For we are the people of England and we have not spoken yet.”

The eclectic, bizarre and magnificent opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics suggests that we have begun to clear our throats and find our voice.

We could never emulate Beijing. That sort of massed precision is simply not British. We are a quirky people and often difficult to understand. I am born and bred English and there were parts of the ceremony that passed over my head but other generations got things that I did not understand. Danny Boyle could never hope to satisfy everybody but he gave something to everyone. It may not be judged to have been the best ceremony in the history of the modern games – who is to judge what is best? – but it was unique; it was phantasmagorical and, essentially, British. What other Head of State would have agreed to a spoof parachute arrival at the age of 86 and then kept it a secret from the tabloid press and even her own family?

We were all inundated with prophesies of gloom prior to the Games – security would be non-existent thanks to G4S; the road network would end in gridlock; the Tube would collapse under the weight of passengers; queues would be miles long at the Olympic venues once you had waited four hours in the immigration hall at Heathrow and businesses would go down the drains. It was a typically British way of rubbishing ourselves. We are allowed to do that but any outsider should think long and hard before he begins to join in the criticism as Mitt Romney has found to his cost.

Agincourt, Trafalgar, Waterloo, Dunkirk, Battle of Britain and London 2012.
“We are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us but do not quite forget.”